New Assembly’ President Talks of Rights of Palestinians and Israel

The newly elected President of the 31st General Assembly, Hamilton Shirley Amerasinghe, of Sri Lanka (Ceylon), declared in his inaugural address to that body yesterday that the most important element for resolving the Middle East conflict is “the need for restoring to the Arab people of Palestine their legitimate rights, which will give them a separate Palestinian state as provided for and endorsed by the United Nations in the partition agreement of 1948.” He called on Israel “to withdraw its armed forces from territories occupied by it as a result of war.”

But Amerasinghe added that another element for a final settlement in the Middle East is “the acknowledgement, both in policy and in practice, of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and of the right of every state in the Middle East, including Israel, to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries, free from the threat or use of force.” He said that the expression “secure and recognized boundaries” entitles any state to determine for itself what those boundaries should be.

THORN PLEADS FOR PALESTINIANS

The outgoing President, Gaston Thorn of Luxembourg, who presided over the 30th General Assembly, declared in an earlier speech that the international community cannot deny the Palestinian people its rights “to existence and to a country of its own.”

Thorn asked, “Can we continue to refuse to give a definite and objective reply to the Palestinian people who for many years have been subjected to massacre and a life of wandering and unhappiness that only the founders of Israel had known before it?” He said, “We cannot deny to these people the very thing that we have granted to others, what every people is entitled to, namely the right to exist and to a country of its own.”