Lord Lothian, the Foreign Affairs spokesman in the House of Lords, said today that Britain does not maintain an embargo on arms sales to either side in the Arab-Israel dispute and considers each arms request on its merits, taking into account the military balance in the Middle East. He noted that exports of military equipment to 12 Arab states have been authorized during the past two years.
Lord Lothian’s remarks came as the Arab League Boycott Committee in Beirut threatened to place the Vickers company and all its international subsidiaries on the Arab blacklist if the firm proceeds with plans to build three submarines for Israel. The threat was made by Mohammed Ahmed Mahgoub, commissioner general of the Arab boycott office who called the submarine deal “an outright alignment with Zionism.”
Should the threat materialize, Vickers could lose a multi-million dollar contract for a dry dock in the Persian Gulf principality of Bahrein and other contracts with Arab countries. A Vickers spokesman said last night that the threatened Arab League boycott “would not dissuade us from carrying out our contracts to build submarines for Israel.”
The spokesman said the contract called for three small subs of a coastal type, adding that “We are just as willing to build for the Arabs. We’re shipbuilders, not politicians.” Lord Lothian said the government was satisfied that Egypt has not obtained indirectly, British equipment “that we should not have been willing to supply directly.”
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