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Canadian Government Places Ban on Arms Shipment to Middle East

January 24, 1956
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The Canadian Government has placed a ban on all arms shipments to the Middle East pending a decision by Parliament on the matter, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent announced. A Commons debate on Middle East policy will be opened with-a-statement by Lester B. Pearson, Minister for External Affairs, probably tomorrow.

Before the Prime Minister’s announcement, it became known that Israel had received an export permit for some $30,000 worth of 25-pounder ammunition–about 1,700 rounds. Last week, the Canadian Government confirmed a report that it had shipped 15 Harvard trainer planes to Egypt.

The Canadian press has been exercised over the reported loading of an Egyptian freighter, Star of Assuan, at Halifax with Canadian naval-type guns and army trucks. The 32 cannon and the 40 trucks are supposedly bound for Turkey, under a NATO consignment, but dock workers insist that mountings for the guns and the trucks have already been put aboard the freighter and draped with Egyptian flags.

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