Israel Foreign Ministry officials today told Nils-Goran Gussing, UN Secretary General U Thant’s personal representative in the Middle East, that Israel would prefer to have the United Nations officials here stick to their business and not engage in public criticism of Israel.
Mr. Gussing was appointed by the Secretary General as his personal representative to deal with humanitarian matters in the aftermath of the war. He is to study the problem of the refugees from the West Bank area, the general treatment of the civilian population and the observance of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war.
The Israeli strictures were not directed against any statements by Mr. Gussing, but were aimed at J. Reddaway, deputy director-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Mr. Reddaway told a London press conference last weekend that both the Arabs and Israel gave a distorted, partisan picture of the situation. He asserted that the truth lay somewhere between what they both said.
Mr. Gussing was told that such remarks did not contribute to cooperation between Israel and the international agencies working here. No objection could be raised, it was pointed out, if Mr. Reddaway had confined his remarks to the treatment of refugees, which was the province in which he worked.
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