Decisive action to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states is still possible at this date, U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie told a press conference here today.
Commenting en the legal opinion issued yesterday “by his staff as a U.N. working paper describing the Palestine Commission as having full power to implement partition without the authority of the Security Council, Lie said that this was primarily a Commission document. He declined to state his own views on the report to the newsmen until he had an opportunity to do so at the Security Council, he said.
The Palestine Commission today began work on a plan for setting up Provisional councils of Government in Palestine. The plan was submitted by Eduardo Morgan, Panamanian member of the Commission.
The Commission questioned Sigfried Hoofien, who spoke on behalf of the Jewish agency, on matters relating to the Palestine Currency Board and sterling balances. Hoofien, who is a director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank in Jerusalem, raised the question of what was to become of Palestine share of the gold reserves of the sterling area after the termination of the Palestine Mandate.
Hoofien also said that the $12,000,000 which is to be made available to the Palestine Commission for current expenses on May 15, when the Mandate ends, plus an estimated $l6,00Q,000 which would come from exports, would not be enough to meet budgetary expenses. He therefore suggested that the Commission should negotiate with the Mandatory Power on defreezing further amounts of sterling.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
