Britain today challenged Egypt’s attempt to control the movement of ships in the Gulf of Aqaba on the southern approaches to Israel. The British Foreign Office said the Gulf is an international waterway open to shipping of all nations. The fact that entrance to it is within the territorial waters of Egypt only entitles Egypt to enforce customs and public health rules, the statement said.
The statement was prompted by a new Egyptian order compelling all ships to give 72 hours notice before entering the Gulf. Egypt, by means of a blockade which the United Nations Security Council has condemned, seeks to block the flow of equipment and supplies to Israel. Egyptian artillery batteries control the narrow entrance to the Gulf which leads to the Israel port of Elath and the Jordanian port of Aqaba.
(Israel, whose port of Elath can only be reached through the strait, immediately announced that it would not recognize the Egyptian move. A Foreign Ministry spokesman pointed out that according to international law a strait leading to a body of water serving the territory of more than one state is deemed to be the high seas–international waters. Israel political leaders have served notice a number of times that the Jewish State would meet force with force if an attempt is made to deny it access to Elath.)
British Government circles, stressing that the ships of all nations had long been given free access to the Gulf, declared that “any attempt by the Egyptian authorities to regulate its (the Gulf’s) shipping may therefore raise delicate issues, although the motive may be a laudable one” of preventing such incident as the shelling of the British vessel Anshun.
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