The United Nations Security Council will meet Monday afternoon to consider a complaint by France that Egypt’s unilateral declaration on operation of the Suez Canal, filed with the Council here on April 24, does not meet the six “basic requirements” on operation of the waterway adopted by the Council last October with Egypt’s concurrence.
Two of those principles affect Israel directly, and these were noted by diplomatic observers here in view of reports that France and Israel have been consultation on the Suez issue. One of those principles forbids discrimination against any Suez shipping, “overt or covert.” Another lays down the rule that the operation of the canal must be “isolated from the politics of any country.”
The French complaint will be made to the Council by Foreign Minister Christian Pineau, who will arrive in New York by air Monday morning, M. Pineau had a long meeting in Paris today with Yaakov Tsur, the Israel Ambassador. In New York, Israel Ambassador Abba S. Eban conferred at length with Guillaume Georges-Picot, France’s permanent representative at the UN. Earlier, he met with Henry Cabot Lodge, American representative and this month’s president of the Security Council, presumably in connection with a Syrian complaint against Israel which the Council is scheduled to hear on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold went into a day-long series of individual conferences with leading delegations, presumably discussing the Suez issue in its overall aspects as well as in its relationship to Israel’s insistence on freedom of passage. Among the delegation chiefs with whom Mr. Hammarskjold conferred were Mr. Lodge; Arkady A. Sobolev, head of the Soviet Union delegation; Dr. E. Ronald Walker, chairman of the Australian delegation who, as a representative of a British Commonwealth nation, has been very outspoken on behalf of Israel’s rights to use the Suez Canal; and M. C. W. A. Schurmann, of the Netherlands, who has taken a position similar to Dr. Walker’s in regard to Israel’s claims.
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