Israel circles said today that they were not aware of any message from Secretary of State Dulles to Premier David Ben Gurion dealing with the Israel-Jordan border situation. It had been reported that the United States had appealed to Israel to exercise the greatest moderation possible in the present situation.
In describing statements made yesterday by Mr. Dulles on the Middle East situation, the New York Herald Tribune reported today that in reaffirming President Eisenhower’s pledge of April 9 to go to the assistance of any victim of aggression in the Middle East, “Mr. Dulles was in effect serving notice to both sides that any military move would almost surely bring the United States in on the side of the invaded country.”
The paper reported that “the most important effect of Mr. Dulles press conference statement was to remove some recently revived talk in Israel that recent strains in American-Arab relations might cause Mr. Eisenhower to withdraw his pledge to go to the aid of whichever side suffered aggression or, perhaps, to overlook minor forays.”
(In London today, a British Foreign Office spokesman said he did not know what Jordan’s commander-in-chief meant when he asserted that an Angle-Jordan agreement permitted Jordan to call on the Royal Air Force for assistance at short notice. The spokesman stressed that any decision on use of British forces in Jordan would have to be taken by Her Majesty’s Government in London.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.