Columnists Claim ‘pro-israel Lobby’ Was Instrumental in Ouster of Yost As UN Envoy

A “pro-Israel lobby” was alleged by two Washington columnists today to have been instrumental in the ouster of Ambassador Charles W, Yost as the chief United States representative to the United Nations. According to Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Yost was the victim of undercover intrigues because he was “insufficiently pro-Israel” in UN backstage maneuverings. The columnists did not identify the element in this “lobby.” The Evans-Novak allegation, published in the Washington Post today under the headline “Israel Lobby Cut Down Yost,” was given some credence by an earlier news analysis piece by Henry Tanner, published Saturday in the New York Times. Mr. Tanner wrote that “Controversy within the administration over the Middle East is widely believed to have been a factor in his (Yost’s) dismissal.” Evans and Novak wrote that “The undercurrent of suspicion of Yost by his zealous pro-Israel critics was originally based on his experience as a U.S. Ambassador assigned to the Arab world…But beyond that, Yost, while never once departing from Nixon administration policies on the Middle East, made no secret of his growing concern over Arab world hostility aimed at the United States because of the increasingly intimate relations between the United States and Israel.” The columnists wrote that Yost “spoke forcefully and frequently within the U.S. government of his conviction that President Nixon must keep the heat on Israel to withdraw from Arab lands captured in the 1967 war.”

According to Evans and Novak, Yost ran afoul of White House foreign policy advisor Henry Kissinger last summer after the latter called for expelling the Russians from the Middle East. Yost reportedly cabled the State Department that the only way to accomplish that was to settle the Mideast dispute, after which the Arabs would get rid of the Russians themselves. The columnists recalled that Yost also fought against a U.S. resolution in the General Assembly six weeks ago “because it would only dramatize the U.S. – Israel alliance.” He was overruled in Washington. According to Tanner’s assessment, Yost believed that the basic interests of the U.S. in the Mideast call for negotiation of a peaceful settlement and help to assure the security of Israel. However, “on occasion as United States policy was being shaped, he is understood to have advocated that the United States exert greater pressure on the Israelis to get them to the conference table than other key officials were willing to accept,” Tanner wrote. He also thought that Yost was closer to Secretary of State Rogers on this issue than to Kissinger who was dubious about the Rogers peace initiative.