Israel’s regular fortnightly convoy to the isolated enclave on Mount Scopus was held up for the second day today in a Jordan-Israel deadlock over passage of two Hebrew University employes assigned by Israel to the 15-man maintenance crew slated as part of the convoy.
As United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization officials worked through the night and today to ease the new dispute, Israel maintained its position that Jordan had no right to exclude anyone from the convoys and that it would not send the convoy through without the two additional maintenance workers. A. Cohen and Abraham Levi.
UN truce chief Maj. Gen. Carl.C. von Horn maintained constant telephone contact last night and this morning with Israel and Jordanian foreign ministries and Henri Vigier, Gen. Horn’s political adviser, met for a second time with Jordan’s Acting Premier Rifai.
In the hope of aiding Gen. Horn’s efforts, Israel abstained from any official statements and the Israel Radio played down the news of the latest convoy dispute. Several months ago, Jordan made an issue of a shipment of gasoline in one of the convoys, holding it up for several days before a settlement of the dispute was reached.
The Jordanian radio this morning refrained from mentioning the newest convoy dispute, but the Jordanian press published statements attributed to Acting Premier Rifai including a charge that the two maintenance workers were held three years ago in Jordan as “Israel infiltrators.” Israel sources called the charge “completely absurd,” pointing out that the two were known to Jordanian officials only by their names on the convoy list and that these names were among the most common in Israel.
Israeli officials unofficially took a grave view of the new deadlock, asserting that under an agreement negotiated by Dr. Francisco Urrutia, who came to the Middle East as UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s personal representative to seek an agreement on the Mount Scopus controversies, Jordan had no right to veto any aspect of Israel’s convoys.
Mr. Levy, one of the two men to whom the Jordanians objected, was identified by Israel today as a librarian who had gone up the height with virtually every convoy, to check that hundreds of thousands of books in the Hebrew University library on the ridge were adequately protected.
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