Eban to Address Security Council Today; Consultations Pressed by Arthur Goldberg

All the principals involved in the Security Council’s efforts to arrive at some solution of the Middle East crisis were busy today talking to members of the Council as well as to the Israelis and the Arabs, as the Council faced tomorrow’s scheduled session.

However, neither Israel’s Foreign Minister Abba Eban nor Arthur J. Goldberg, head of the United States delegation, would reveal the names of the members of the Council with whom energetic consultations were held Sunday and Saturday. Mr. Eban was believed to have talked not only with Mr. Goldberg but also with Lord Caradon, Britain’s permanent representative here and George Ignatieff, Canada’s Ambassador to the United States, as well as to the Ethiopian representative on the Council and several others.

One thing was certain, Mr. Eban is the first speaker on the Council’s list for tomorrow’s meeting. Since the Soviet-Arab cabal had succeeded in silencing him last Thursday night, it is expected that Mr. Eban’s speech would be even tougher than one he had prepared for delivery Thursday but never got around to voicing, having refused to speak at all in the position of a “midnight orator.”

Mr. Goldberg’s chief targets today were believed to have been the Soviet and Arab delegations, the latter led by Egypt’s Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad. It was hinted in reliable quarters here that, while the U.S.A. might be willing to alter somewhat the formulation of its draft resolution before the Council, to make it more palatable to the Arab and Soviet groups, the U.S. representative is sticking close to the draft he had already presented to the Council, calling for a “just settlement” of the Israeli-Arab issues but hewing to the policy set forth by President Johnson last June 19.

The only issue on which both the U.S. and the Arab-Soviet blocs agree is a proposal that the Security Council authorize Secretary-General Thant to send a special representative to the Mideast to act as a channel of communication between the Arab states and Israel. However, the terms of reference to be laid down for that special representative seemed today to be just as far apart as they were when the Council opened its debate Thursday night with the U.S. draft countered by another, co-sponsored by India, Mali and Nigeria, which is totally unacceptable to Israel.

In a later development, Lt. Gen. Odd Bull, the U.N.’s supervisor of the cease-fire in the Middle East, reported today that Egyptian positions “fired one round of anti-aircraft or tank fire” at an Israeli patrol vehicle in the Suez Canal area. The vehicle was burned and the fire was not returned by Israeli forces, according to Gen. Bull, even though two Israeli soldiers were wounded.”