Israeli delegate Arthur Lourie had to reply today again to Arab attacks on Israel when the Ad Hoc Special Political Committee’s decision on the Palestine refugee problem came before a plenary meeting of the General Assembly.
He repeated that the refugee problem had arisen not from a failure by Israel to carry out a United Nations resolution but as a result of Arab defiance of this resolution–as a “consequence of armed aggression” against Israel.
Mr. Lourie said that Israel had absorbed 750,000 refugees, and declared that if the Arab states had followed its example there would be no refugee problem now. The Israeli delegate was replying mainly to Dr. Fadhil at Jamali of Iraq who “in explaining” his vote, had asserted that the resolution which the Assembly adopted would do no good as long as one member state continued to defy a U.N. resolution.
The Assembly approved the Ad Hoc Committee’s proposal to continue the U.N. Relief and Works Agency’s $250,000,000 relief and reintegration program and authorized it to increase its relief budget for the present fiscal year to $23,000,000. The vote was 48 to zero, with six abstentions. The abstainees were the Soviet bloc and Iraq.
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