“Israel shipping will not pass through the Suez Canal, ” President Gamal Abdul Nasser of the United Arab Republic said yesterday, addressing a public meeting in Rosetta near Alexandria.
The question of Israeli passage through the Canal, he said, was part of the “Palestine problem” and had nothing to do with freedom of navigation. He claimed that Israel is a “belligerent state with no right of passage through the Suez Canal.”
The Egyptian dictator made the statement a week before the World Bank meeting in Washington which is due to consider Egypt’s application for a loan to widen the canal. The United Arab Republic is meeting with opposition to the loan in the United States because of its intransigent attitude towards the principle of free navigation through the canal.
A total of 101 foreign ships have been blacklisted by Iraq for violating the Arab boycott of trade with Israel, Baghdad Radio reported today. Citing a spokesman for the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, the report added that 34 of the ships were registered in Britain, 17 in the United States and seven were Dutch.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
