Shortly after his arrival in West Germany for a three-day official visit, on Monday , Syria’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Abdul Halim Khaddam, went to the Foreign Ministry in Bonn, for talks with his German opposite number, Herr Hans-Dietrich Genscher. Their discussions lasted for two and a half hours.
In a speech at a dinner during the evening for his Syrian guest, Herr Genscher said he hoped the 180-million-mark (about 3??? million pounds sterling) capital aid agreement due to be signed the next day (13 May) would be followed within a few months by a technical cooperation agreement between the two countries.
Herr Genscher said the EEC-Arab dialogue, which is due to begin at expert level next month, offered a variety of opportunities for cooperation and could be regarded as a model for multilateral cooperation between different regions, and a contribution toward the stabilization of the situation in the Middle East.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that in their talks earlier in the day, the two ministers had discussed how the Palestinians could be brought into the EEC-Arab dialogue. Herr Genscher had made it clear that Bonn would officially recognize only governments, but this did not prevent the Palestinians being represented in talks held at working group and committee level.
The spokesman said that Mr. Khaddam had told Herr Genscher that the dialogue should move as quickly as possible into the practical stage.
