No official reply was received this week-end by Ambassador Roger Carresu, president of the United Nations Trusteeship Council, from Israel or any of the other governments which he consulted on his compromise plan on the internationalization of Jerusalem, it was learned hers today.
Ambassador Garreau’s plan, which would out down the area to be internationalized to a fraction of that specified last year by the U.N. General. Assembly, would offer no opposition to the establishment of Israel’s capital in Jewish Jerusalem, but would require that all areas of the city be demilitarized. The plan also calls for Israel and Transjordan to permit the free exchange of goods and currency between the two sections of the city and would also require that the two states allow free circulation of population.
(The New York Times reported from Tel Aviv today that a Foreign Office spokesman indicated that the Israel Government’s reaction to the Carreau plan is negative. The spokesman said that the recommendation was no more than a lesser geographical version of the U.N. Assembly’s internationalization s#### and still contained many of the objectionable features of its predecessor.)
Submission of the plan, however may not take place at the opening of the forthcoming session of the Trusteeship Council, which is set for January 19 at Geneva. It is expected that Ambassador Garreau will withhold his plan pending the outcome of current negotiations between Israel and Transjordan over the future of Jerusalem.
In addition to consulting with the State Department on the plan and submitting it for consideration to Israel and other nations, the head of the U.N. Council has also discussed it with Francis Cardinal Speldman of the Catholic Church, with representatives of the Protestant Federal Council of Churches of Christ and with representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church. Cardinal Spellman is said to have told the Ambassador that suggestions and comments on the plan should come from the Vatican’s Secretary of state.
Just prior to emplaning for Geneva to attend the Trusteeship Council session, American Ambassador Francis B. Sayre declared that the United States will seek to bring about a solution of the Jerusalem problem which would be acceptable to both Israel and Transjordan. He also said that the U.S. is still opposed to the Assembly’s internationalization resolution. “We will,” he added, “cooperate in seeking a solution of the problem, but we want a practical solution, and it would not be a practical solution if United States troops are required to enforce the resolution.”
(In Paris, the French Foreign Office told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the French delegate to the Trusteeship Council would take into consideration not only the Jerusalem internationalization plan as accepted by the United Nations, but “facts and realities” concerning Jerusalem.)
It was revealed here this week-end that the report of the U.N. Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East, headed by Gordon R. Clapp, cha(##)man-on-leave of the Tennessee Valley Authority, will be made public tomorrow. The report will deal with long-range economic development in the Middle East.
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