Gromyko Warns Israel Its Policies Jeopardize Its Existence

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei T.Gromyko accused Israel today of acting in collusion with the United States and Turkey in a plot calling for invasion of Syria and coupled his allegations with a direct warning to the Jewish State that its policies were jeopardizing its existence. The Soviet diplomat’s attack on Israel followed the lead given by the Syrian Foreign Minister in the debate on the Middle East in the United Nations General Assembly this afternoon.

In backing the Syrian complaint against Turkey, Mr. Gromyko said: “As for Israel, she had discredited herself too much by last year’s adventure against Egypt. Nevertheless, Israel too has a part to play in the plans directed against Syria and the other Arab States. During the discussion of the American-Turkish plan of attack on Syria, it was also envisaged that Israel too would take part at a certain stage in these operations. Judging by experience. Israel gives little thought to its future development, even to its very existence as a state, if the policy which is now being pursued by the Government of Israel would continue. It looks as if Israel is cutting at the branch on which it sits.”

BARS PROBE ON SYRIAN-ISRAEL BORDER

Israel was dragged into the picture by the Syrian Foreign Minister, Saleh Bitar, who addressed the Assembly in advancing a Syrian demand for appointment of a special commission to investigate Syrian claims that Turkey was planning aggression and to report back to the Assembly within 10 days. The Syrian made it clear that while he was accusing Israel of a role in the alleged plot against his country, the proposed commission was not to inspect the Israel-Syrian border but was to confine its activities to the Turkish-Syrian frontier.

The plot, as unfolded by Mr. Bitar in his tirade today, involved United States support of Turkish efforts to subvert the Syrian regime “to the benefit of international Zionism.” Components of the plot he cited included the Eisenhower Doctrine, the presence of the Sixth U. S. Fleet in the eastern Mediterranean and the “heavy arming” of Israel. The plan of Turkey and the West, he alleged, was to “confront the Arab States with Zionist expansionism” and to destroy those Arab States that opposed it. He denounced Zionism as “a front for colonialism in the Middle East.”

The Syrian advocate brushed aside criticism of Syria’s arms acquisitions from the Communist bloc, describing them as “legitimate commercial purchases from the Soviet Union.”