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Britain Blocks Resolution in European Parliament Condemning Terrorist Bombing in Jerusalem

July 10, 1975
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A resolution before the European Common Market Parliament which condemns last Friday’s terrorist bombing that took 14 lives in Jerusalem and cites the Palestine Lib- eration Organization as a threat to world peace, was blocked last night by British representatives who compared the Jerusalem outrage to the assassination of Lord Moyne by two members of the Jewish underground Stern group in Cairo in 1944. As a result, a vote on the draft submitted by Socialist, Christian Democrat and Liberal members, was postponed.

Peter Kirk, a Conservative MP who heads the British delegation to the Common Market Parliament currently in session in Strasbourg, argued that it was a mistake to try to make distinctions between individual acts of terror. He said the Jerusalem blast and the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British resident minister in the Middle East, were equally reprehensible, even if separated by 30 years.

Kirk noted that the bodies of Moyne’s killers were returned to Israel by Egypt a week ago and given a state funeral with full military honors in Jerusalem. He also warned that the resolution could jeopardize the European-Arab dialogue which he termed “one of the most fruitful initiatives taken by the (European Economic) Community.” The resolution urges the EEC to break off the dialogue until the PLO renounces the use of force.

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