Israel has reacted bitterly to the Security Council resolution which extended the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) mandate in Sinai for another three months. The resolution which was adopted late Thursday evening by a vote of 13-0 with China and Iraq not participating, expressed “satisfaction” for Egypt’s response to the Council’s appeal last Monday to reconsider its threat not to renew the mandate.
The vote on the mandate had been delayed several hours Thursday because the draft resolution expressed “satisfaction” with Egypt’s response, while Egypt insisted that the resolution express “appreciation.” The United States and Great Britain refused to go along with the demand to express “appreciation.”
An official statement issued here Friday said the resolution was “in the best tradition of the partiality which has characterized the United Nations and its agencies in everything having to do with Israel,” The statement added that the resolution “completely disregards the constructive position taken by Israel” which proposed the mandate be extended by six months July 14. “Instead, the Security Council sees fit to praise Egypt for condescending to extend for three months, after that country has brought on a crisis and created dangerous tension with its previous announcement that the mandate will not be renewed,” the statement said.
Top Foreign Ministry officials called a news briefing to “alert world public opinion” to the danger of the Security Council “going the way of the General Assembly” in its biased handling of the Mideast issue.
IMPLIED CRITICISM OF U.S. WESTERN COUNTRIES
The officials implicitly criticized the U.S. and other Western members for not standing firmly enough against Egyptian demands at the Council, Asked if Israel had been disappointed at the U.S. failure to veto the resolution, Shlomo Argov, an assistant director-general at the Foreign Ministry, said “no comment.”
Argove and ministry legal adviser, Meir Rosenne, admitted that the U.S. and other Western states had baulked at the Egyptian demand that the Council express “appreciation” at Egypt’s response to its appeal to renew the mandate. The Council’s expression of “satisfaction” was seen in Israel as totally unjustified and biased. At the very least, Argov said, Israel should have been similarly complimented for its agreement to a six-month extension.
Egypt, in fact, deserved the Council’s reprobation, he said, for having created an “artificial crisis” by its earlier refusal to renew the mandate, Argov and Rosenne said they saw the Security Council resolution as further evidence of the increasing “bankruptcy of the world organization and the takeover by an unruly majority.”
They reiterated Foreign Minister Yigal Allon’s warning of earlier in the week that if Israel was discriminated against at the forthcoming General Assembly, it would “reconsider” its attitude to the UN and cease its cooperation with the world body in its peace-keeping and other functions.
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