The Palestine Liberation Organization was voted observer status in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) yesterday by 70 Third World and Communist nations with only three countries–the United States, Israel and South Africa–opposed. The ICAO is a United Nations affiliate.
Canada, the host country, approved the resolution permitting the adoption vote but abstained on the substantive vote, as did 32 other members. The vote enables the PLO to sit in as an observer at ICAO meetings but without the right to vote. The vote yesterday had been foreshadowed by a 1974 ICAO vote to allow the PLO to attend regional ICAO meetings as a non-voting observer but only as a member of a delegation from the Organization of African Unity or the Arab League, a right never used by the PLO, according to an ICAO spokesman.
The admittance resolution, introduced by 20 Arab nations, pointed out that the PLO had been given observer status for United Nations General Assembly meetings and in other UN agencies.
Israel’s Consul General, Zvi Caspi, in opposing the resolution, said the PLO was neither a state nor an international agency such as the International Air Transport Association and accordingly was not entitled to membership by the ICAO charter. Caspi called admission of the PLO a “travesty” of ICAO goals of air safety and orderly progress in civil aviation.
U.S. ISSUES STATEMENT
The U.S. delegation issued a statement declaring that observer status would give the PLO a standing “which goes beyond that which ICAO previously granted to national liberation movements.” The U.S. also objected to a phrase in the resolution which referred to PLO “territories” which could prejudice a question which it said was properly a subject for the parties to the Middle East dispute to decide in negotiations.
The U.S. denounced the PLO’s “history of activity especially in connection with unlawful interference with aviation inconsistent with the principles which ICAO seeks to promote throughout the world.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
