With the “high priority” debate on the Middle East crisis in the General Assembly postponed for at least a week, strenuous efforts were under way here today to work out some kind of formula, to be laid before the Security Council, to which both Israel and the Arab states could agree so as to get the Israeli-Arab dispute off dead center.
The Assembly, which has been in session since September 19, had been scheduled to open debate tomorrow on the Middle East crisis, as a matter of “urgency.” However, on Friday night, Corneliu Manescu, of Rumania, president of the Assembly, announced suspension of all plenary meetings “for a short while.”
Secretary-General Thant told correspondents here yesterday that he expected direct talks to open tomorrow between United States and Egyptian diplomats that might lead to definitive U.N. action in the Council, adding there had been “progress” in the talks between the U.S.A. and Egypt. However, a spokesman for the U.S. delegation did not name Egypt as the U.N. member with which the Washington diplomats would discuss the issue, saying only that the U.S.A. is continuing to discuss with various delegations the possibility of finding a basis for Arab-Israeli agreement.
(In Jerusalem, today, Israeli Foreign Ministry sources said they knew of no agreement on the Middle East crisis between the U.S.A. and Egypt, or of “progress” in those consultations.)
The Council is officially still “seized” of the Middle East issue but has held no meetings on the question since July. The effort to shift the issue from the Assembly to the Council is based on the notion that the Council, a smaller body, consisting of only 15 members, might make some progress, since none had been noted in the Assembly thus far. The feeling here today was that, even in the Council, all that might be done would be a decision that Mr. Thant send a special representative to the Middle East as a “channel of communication” between the Arabs and Israel.
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