An Israeli amendment to a resolution proposing that next year’s General Assembly make “special efforts” to complete two draft covenants dealing with human rights was adopted unanimously here today by the Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, after the Soviet delegation fought hard against the inclusion of the Israeli amendment. The draft covenants have been debated here since 1954.
The committee had been discussing for nearly two weeks steps for implementing the draft human rights covenants, one dealing with civil and political rights, the other with economic, social and cultural rights. Today, as the committee was about to vote on a resolution passing the entire matter on for special consideration of next year’s Assembly, Dr. Eliezer Yapou, Israel’s representative in the committee, proposed an amendment which would mention “implementation” of the covenants specifically. Without such a clause, the draft covenants would not highlight the need to implement the draft covenants, which would have the force of international law.
Dr. Yapou’s amendment was appended by the Israeli to a 10-member resolution co-sponsored, among others, by Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The Soviet representative in the committee denounced the Israeli amendment as “monkey business.” Dr. Yapou and the Soviet delegate, Y.A. Ostrovsky, each spoke on the issue five times. In the end, the Israeli amendment was put to a vote, and was adopted, 49 to 8, with 26 abstentions. Then the entire resolution was put to the vote, and the Soviet Union accepted it, making the ballot on the resolution as a whole unanimous.
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