Israel, Jordan UN Letters Charge Cease-fire Violations

The Israeli and Jordanian representatives to the United Nations each sent a letter to Security Council President Joao Augusto de Araujo Castro of Brazil today in which each charged the other country with a series of attacks on its territory in violation of the cease-fire agreement. The letter from Ambassador Yosef Tekoah, chief of the Israeli delegation to the UN, referred to “a large scale premeditated military attack” by Jordanian forces yesterday against Israeli villages in the Beisan and Jordan Valleys. The letter went on to list chronologically Jordanian assaults on Israeli positions and civilian settlements from Aug. 18 through Aug. 23. “The Jordanian attacks carried out by regular as well as irregular forces operating from Jordanian territory with the support of Jordanian authorities constitute premeditated and planned violations of the cease-fire,” Mr. Tekoah’s letter said. The Israeli envoy asked that it be circulated as a Security Council document.

The Jordanian representative, Ambassador Muhammad H. el-Farra, charged in his letter that Israeli forces had shelled 10 Jordanian villages in the northern Jordan Valley yesterday and claimed that three civilians were seriously injured and that a school, a mosque, a number of houses and an irrigation canal were destroyed. The Jordanian also referred to warning leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft over Jordanian cities last Friday as evidence that the alleged Israeli attacks were premeditated. The Jordanian envoy did not call for a meeting of the Security Council but asserted that a “new situation” has developed and that “the Security Council is therefore expected to meet and take more effective measures to check Israeli aggression and to remedy a situation fraught with dangers.” He also requested that his letter be circulated as a Security Council document.