Indication of U.S. Stand on Israel’s Request for Arms Expected Today

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles is expected to give some indication of the status of American consideration of the Israel arms list tomorrow when he holds a press conference at the State Department. The American position on the mediation proposals of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, who urged a-sacrifice of territory by Israel, may also be more clearly defined.

Defense Department sources reported today that Soviet munitions shipments to Egypt are rapidly piling up with the arrival of a number of Soviet bloc freighters at Alexandria and Port said in the last several days. It is thought here that all arms contracted for by Egypt in the deal signed with Communist Czechoslovakia may be delivered by January 1, 1956.

Reports reaching here today from Damascus reveal that a squadron of Egyptian jet places has arrived in Syria to reinforce the Syrian Air Force. Arrival of the Egyptian planes was described as the first military measure to implement a new Syrian-Egyptian military pact aimed against Israel.

The chairman of the Near Eastern Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today defended Egypt’s Communist arms purchases. Senator Theodore F. Green, Rhode Island Democrat, who returned recently from a visit to Israel and Egypt, also said “it would be a mistake” to give any security guarantee to Israel, if it were not also given to some of the adjoining Arab countries. He added that he “doubted very much” that the U.S. would give a security guarantee to Israel.

Declaring in a radio interview that Egypt is a sovereign nation with a right to purchase arms for self-defense, Sen. Green cited Arab arguments that Israel has superior military power to the Arab states either separately or collectively. He urged that the U.S. keep “absolute neutrality.” “These questions so far as is possible should be left to the United Nations to help solve, rather than calling upon us to solve them for them,” he stated.