Israel Supplies Hammarskjold with Data on Ship Detained at Suez

The Israel Foreign Ministry today sent to Yosef Tekoah, Israel’s acting permanent representative at the United Nations, the documentation requested by Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold in connection with the Greek freighter Astypalea, which the United Arab Republic has kept berthed at the Port Said entrance to the Suez Canal since mid-December.

Mr. Hammarskjold had asked for further information after UAR President Gamal Abdel Nasser told the UN Chief at Cairo, last month, that the Israel-originated cargo carried on the Astypalea was not shipped f. o. b. Haifa. Israel has insisted that the cargo had been bought and paid for by French Somaliland purchasers.

Israel’s latest move, in supplying the documentation to the UN, is seen here as a willingness on the part of the Government to continue “playing Hammarskjold’s game. ” Insistence by Hammarskjold on the information sought by Nasser is considered as only an evasion by Hammarskjold himself, who claims that the “technical arrangements” he had made with Nasser earlier are still valid. Those arrangements include a Nasser pledge to let Israeli cargoes go through the Canal in foreign bottoms, if the cargoes were in fact at the time owned by foreign, non-Israeli dealers.

Privately, Hammarskjold has admitted–it is said here–that, should Israel try another test shipment living up to those “practical arrangements. ” Nasser may be forced by “the political situation” to bar such a shipment again.

(At the United Nations today, Mr. Tekoah conferred for 45 minutes with Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, Undersecretary for Special Political Affairs, who had accompanied Mr. Hammarskjold in the latter’s talks at Cairo with President Nasser.)