The Israeli member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission declared today that there was no place on the Commission’s agenda for a four-power draft resolution, introduced in the Commission yesterday, calling on that body to affirm the rights of inhabitants “displaced or deported since the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East to return to their own country” and to call on Israel to take the necessary measures to facilitate their return.
Dr. Shabtai Rosenne told the Commission that the preamble to the draft resolution gave “an utterly incorrect picture” of the actions of the Security Council and General Assembly which the adoption of the resolution was supposed to reinforce. He warned that adoption of the proposal would prejudice the peace-making efforts of the Secretary-General and his special representative in the Middle East. He charged that the draft showed a “lack of balance” which he said could be explained only on political grounds. The resolution had been introduced by the Indian representative and co-sponsored by Pakistan, Yugoslavia and the Congo.
The Indian delegate denied Dr. Rosenne’s charge of political motives and argued that by facilitating the return of persons to their homes, the resolution would help “de-fuse the situation in West Asia (Middle East), thus leading to peace.” The draft resolution also received support from the Philippine, Egyptian and Lebanese delegations. The latter criticized the draft, however, for failing to deal with the Arabs displaced in 1948.
A wildly abusive attack on Israel was made by a non-governmental representative, Omar Azouni of the World Moslem Congress, who accused Israel of genocide and termed Israelis “Zionist murderers.” He said the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States had contributed to the “victimization” of the Arabs of Palestine. The British delegate later said that the representative of a non-governmental organization had made “abusive remarks” about his country which were not worth answering.
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