Congress and the Nixon Administration appeared today to share the feeling that the new Middle East war must be ended swiftly and the cease-fire lines restored to what they were before the Yom Kippur attack by Egypt and Syria. That was the gist of a resolution adopted yesterday by the Senate and the proposal voiced in the UN Security Council last night by the U.S. Ambassador John Scali.
“Military operations must be halted…conditions must be restored in the area that would be conducive to a settlement of the long-standing differences in the Middle East,” Selli said in the course of the first Security Council session on the war which lasted 87 minutes and adjourned until today.
Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger referred only briefly to the Middle East fighting in a speech here last night. But his address, to the Conference on International Relations and World Peace, contained an oblique-warning to the Soviet Union not to take any action that could escalate the Mideast fighting. The U.S., said Kissinger, will resist aggressive foreign policies. He warned that “detente cannot survive irresponsibility in any area, including the Middle East.”
Sentiments expressed by key Congressmen since the fighting began indicated support in the legislative branch for the Administration’s position. There was also strong support for Israel. Sen. George McGovern (D.S.D.) in a special statement, praised Israel for showing “remarkable restraint” in withholding pre-emptive military action despite prior knowledge that an Arab attack was imminent. This policy entailed “the risk of greater casualties (for Israel) in order to continue observing the 1970 cease-fire,” McGovern said.
A similar view was expressed by former Sen. Eugene McCarthy who suggested that Israel refrained from pre-emptive response “to the tremendous build-up it observed on the cease-fire lines largely because our government assured it that the Arabs did not intend war.” This, he said, “imposes a further moral obligation on the U.S. to sustain Israel’s strength in its efforts to reverse the present perils and defend itself against aggression.” LATE NEWS BULLETIN: This is not going to be a short war., Gen. Aharon Yariv said tonight in Tel Aviv. Deaving the initiative to the enemy permitted them to score some achievements, he said.
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.
