Johnson Devotes His Weekly Foreign Policy Conference to Arab-israeli Crisis

President Johnson was reported to have devoted most of his regular weekly conference on foreign policy today to the war crisis in the Middle East. The President met with Secretary of State Rusk. Secretary of Defense McNamara, Presidential Adviser Walt W. Rostow, and others.

Earlier, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee met on the Arab-Israeli crisis in secret session with Secretary Rusk. After the meeting, which lasted almost three hours. Secretary Rusk said, “I think the situation is very touchy.” He added he considered it “unwise to comment at this time.”

One Senate source revealed that the Administration was determined to do its utmost through diplomacy to avert war but did not intend to become involved unilaterally. This source said the United States will advise Israel to refrain from using the Akaba Gulf route until the visit of U.N. Secretary-General U Thant to Cairo was completed and the crisis lessened.

It was reported here by official sources that the Administration was seeking a “Tashkent formula” in which the Arab-Israel conflict would be regarded in the same sense that Washington saw the recent Pakistani-Indian outbreak. The United States would immediately cancel arms shipments to Israel and any Arab state involved in the fighting. Washington would then hope that the Soviet Union would use its influence with the Arabs to bring about a willingness to disengage.

Chairman J. W. Fulbright of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said today following the three-hour appearance of Secretary Rusk before the Committee, that Russia had a “great opportunity” to display devotion to peace by working with the Arabs and Israelis for a solution “even more spectacular than their success in mediating the war between India and Pakistan at the Tashkent Conference.” He said the Russians were “widely commended” for the Tashkent formula and he hoped that such efforts might now be exerted to preserve Middle Eastern peace.

Another member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Stuart Symington, Missouri Democrat and former U.S. Air Force Secretary, said he was not reassured that America can defend both the Middle East and the Far East — emphasizing that “the Middle East is more important to the security of the United States than is the Far East.” He said it was an international responsibility to keep open the Gulf of Akaba.

Senate Republican leader Everett M. Dirksen, Illinois, told a press conference that Senate Republicans discussed the Rusk report on the Middle East and decided that it was apparent from what was reported that “no decisions” on American policy were reached as yet. He said, “the Soviet Union is very much behind this” and Israel is “boxed in.”