United States support of the Arab states move to place an Egyptian complaint against Israel and the Israel complaint against Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal and Gulf of Eilath against Israel-bound shipping on the same agenda at the United Nations Security Council, has raised the question here this week-end of whether the United States has entered a race with the Soviet Union for the favor of the Arab states.
The American move came Thursday when the Council spent two and one-half hours in a wrangle over its agenda and adjourned until Friday five minutes after the agenda had been accepted, without having heard the Israeli complaint. The extended debate began when the Lebanese delegate moved to force simultaneous discussion of an Egyptian complaint against alleged Israeli violation of the demilitarized zone in the El Auja area, near Gaza, with the Israeli charge that Egypt had violated a Security Council resolution of Sept. 1. 1951, the Israel-Egyptian armistice agreement and the UN Charter by maintaining the blockade against Israel.
The French and British delegates opposed the move, asking that the Egyptian complaint be handled in routine fashion as a separate item to be discussed in its turn.
The Soviet and Nationalist Chinese delegates backed the Arab demand for simultaneous debate and the United States offered a “compromise” – lumping of the two complaints in one item, but discussing them separately. When Lebanon withdrew its own proposal in favor of the American, the latter was adopted without dissent.
On Friday, Israel delegate Abba Eban warned the Security Council that the “continuation of a hostile act, based on the assertion of a state of war, in prolonged and deliberate defiance of a Security Council resolution, clearly creates the kind of situation to which the enforcement measures laid down in Chapter VII of the Charter should apply. My Government believes that the Security Council should take such measures in response to Egypt’s violation, unless it receives assurance in this debate that the restrictions will be immediately cancelled.” (Chapter VII of the UN Charter deals with sanctions and measures for enforcing Security Council orders.)
EBAN URGES SECURITY COUNCIL TO DEFEND OWN AUTHORITY
The Israeli delegate pointed out to the Council that it delayed decisive action to end the Egyptian blockade at risk to its own dignity. “We consider that the Security Council cannot pass without the strongest censure over the fact that its verdict already has been defied for so long.” He recommended that the Council should not relie merely on “vigorous expression of its desires” but should establish machinery and procedures to follow up the course of its resolutions.
In a carefully documented statement, Mr. Eban outlined the entire history of the Israeli complaint against the blockade of the Suez Canal, refuting the Egyptian assertion that a state of war exists between the two states, justifying maintenance of blockade measures. After describing Egyptian actions in the Sues Canal and at the Gulf of Eilath, the Israeli diplomat denounced the Egyptian Government for having “acted like a highway robber at a narrow crossroads, dictating its will to those who pass to and fro.”
Noting that the Security Council resolution of 1951 has been totally ignored and that new restrictions have been added, Mr. Eban emphasized that the Security Council faces the “supreme test of its own authority.” He underlined that if the “authority of the Security Council as the final arbiter of armistice disputes were to be shattered by Egyptian intransigeance, a central pillar of the armistice system would crumble away at the very moment when that system is in most need of a stronger support.”
The Egyptian delegate, Ahmed Abdel Razek, who followed Mr. Eban, took strong exception to his characterization of the Egyptian Government’s actions as those of a “highway robber.” He insisted that since the Council resolution of 1951 Egypt had not seized any ships in the Canal. However, he said his country reserved her position regarding infringement of its sovereign rights under the UN Charter, and referred–without explanation–to Charter Article XXVII which sets up Security Council voting procedure, including the veto.
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