After an 18-minute secret meeting of the Security Council here this afternoon at which the requests of Israel and seven Arab states to be heard in the debate on the Suez Canal crisis were discussed. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said that “that is still an open question.” It was reported later that only four members of the Council were in favor of hearing Israel and the Arab States – the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba. No vote was taken at the session.
Egypt’s blockade of the Suez Canal against Israel is “an entirely different matter” from the issue under discussion now by the Security Council, according to Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi. Answering a question about his country’s blockade of Israel, during a luncheon with the United Nations Correspondents Association, Dr. Fawzi asserted that “not even in the Security Council’s resolution of 1951, was it said that Egypt violated the 1888 convention on the Suez Canal.”
Jordan’s delegate to the UN said today that his country may ask for a Security Council meeting tomorrow on Israel’s raid on Qualqilya. If the Council permits this to continue, Abdel Monem Rifai said, “I am afraid that war is inevitable.”
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