Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd refused today to give Commons any information at all concerning British arms shipments to the countries of the Middle East, asserting that to do so would be to depart from set government policy. Disclosure of such information, he added, might embarrass purchasers and cause them to buy their weapons elsewhere and thus Britain would lose all “control” over them.
He responded in the negative to half-a-dozen questions concerning quantities of arms sent to Israel and the Arab states, on the value of those arms and on the balance of arms between Israel and the Arab states. He kept insisting that to give these figures would be to present a partial and therefore a false picture, since it would not include information about arms purchases by these same states from other suppliers. When an exasperated Laborite questioner finally demanded that he be given a “complete” picture, the Foreign Secretary retreated to his refusal to provide such information as a matter of “policy.”
Although at one point Mr. Lloyd insisted that he was quite “satisfied that a balance of arms is currently being maintained in the Middle East, he later said that the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 did not provide for an arms parity. He also predicted that there would be no real solution of the Arab refugee question except within the framework of a general Israel-Arab settlement.
During discussion of the training of officers for the Arab Legion in Britain, Defense Minister Sir Walter Monckton attempted to ward off criticism by pointing out that Israeli officers were also being trained in this country.
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