The British Government’s view remains that the waters of the Gulf of Akaba and the Straits of Tiran and Sanafir have international status and are not the territorial waters of the littoral Arab states, Selwyn Lloyd, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, declared in Commons today.
Replying to persistent queries from Laborites during the question period, Mr. Lloyd supported a view he attributed to Dag Hammarskjold, United Nations Secretary General, that the UN Emergency Force should not be used to make a permanent settlement of the status of Tiran and Sanafir, the two tiny islands in the passageway leading from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Akaba.
The Foreign Secretary agreed with Laborite Sir L. W. Ungoed-Thomas that Egypt’s exclusion of Israel from the Suez Canal could not be justified under the 1888 Constantinople Convention and was a breach of international law and of Security Council resolutions. “Our view he reiterated, “is that under international law Israeli ships are entitled to go through that canal. ” He added that “it would be very much better if we could get that problem legally determined as quickly as possible.”
He refused to go along with a request that the British Government propose an “open skies” aerial inspection plan for disarmament of the Middle East. Mr. Lloyd insisted that while Israel favored such a plan, it was not feasible unless all “e states affected agreed and that such a project should not be imposed from without but only after consultation with the states involved.
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