France Does Not Believe Israel Planes Carried Arms for Rebels

An official Israel Government spokesman indicated today that the French officials had no doubts that a plane from Israel which was forced to land at Bone, Algeria, last week was not carrying arms for Algerian rebels.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman here told newsmen that there is “no trace of doubt in the minds of the foreign authorities concern that the plane and its cargo were destined for a Latin American country.”It was understood that the “authorities concerned” was the French Government with which Jerusalem has been in constant touch since the embarrassing incident developed.

Meanwhile, Israeli aviation circles confirmed that the B-17 which landed with engine trouble and was interned by local French military authorities, was Israeli in origin. However, these same circles noted, since the plane and its cargo was sold to an unnamed Latin American state F.o. b. Lydda, it was no longer an Israeli craft the moment it was airborne.

(From Paris it was reported today that an Israeli plane had landed near Bone, Algeria, with a crew of Israeli mechanics and spare parts to make the Flying Fortress air-worthy again. Newsmen in Algeria were not permitted to talk to either the new arrivals or the crew of the B-17, which includes an Israeli navigator, Solomon Rauchweger.)

While details of the affair remain secret here, it was learned that the present impasse is the result of a series of mishaps and misunderstandings compounded by local French military suspicion of any arms cargoes in Algeria. There have been other occasions when arms shipments for the national were, upon apprehension, said to be meant for another destination,

The Israeli press is critical of the Foreign Ministry for not having made a clear and full explanation of the incident immediately and thus forestalled the wave of suspicion in Algeria and, to a lesser extent, in the paris press.