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50 U.N. Secretariat Guards to Be Flown to Palestine to Assist Truce Observers

June 18, 1948
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Fifty members of the United Nations Secretariat guard force will leave for Cairo Saturday to assist U.N. military truce observers in Palestine, It was announced here today. The guards will be flown to Cairo at the request of U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte.

In Cairo they will receive their instructions and assignments from Bernadotte. It is expected that they will be assigned to duty at various points along the supply highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They will wear their U,N. uniforms and insignia.

A Secretariat directive barred all British, Arab or Jewish Secretariat members from serving with the guard detail. Applications were received from 50 U.N. staff personnel who are not members of the security guard. The decision to send the Secretariat guards was made after Secretary-General Trygve Lie rejected a plan to “borrow” a like number of New York policeman for the job.

The possibility that the mediator plans to seek an extension of the four-week truce, whether or not the Rhodes negotiations produce a lasting settlement was indicated here by Andrew Cordier, executive assistant to Lie. He told the volunteers that their Palestine assignment would last two or three months, perhaps longer.

The Provisional Government of Israel today formally announced the appointment of Michael S. Comay as director of British Commonwealth relations, Gideon Suffer as senior staff member, and Moises A. Toff as director of the Latin American Division of the Foreign Office. All three are in their thirties and members of the Israeli mission to the United Nations.

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