Roger Garreau, president of the U.N. Trusteeship Council, revealed today to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he discussed this week a proposal of his own regarding the status of Jerusalem with the State Department in Washington and that he also transmitted this proposal to “interested parties,” including Israel.
The reactions of these parties would determine whether or not his proposal would be embodied in a working paper which he has to present to the Council when it meets in Geneva this month to discuss implementation of the U.N. decision to place Jerusalem under international trusteeship. The State Department, Mr. Garreau said, expressed a desire to wait and see what the other responses would be.
Mr. Garreau described his proposal as establishing a “corpus separatum” along the lines required by the General Assembly resolution, but including within it a “third zone” which would be under the full collective sovereignty of the United Nations. This zone would include the Old City and a small sector of the new City and the remaining parts of the corpus separatum would continue to be governed by Israel and Transjordan, even to the extent of permitting those states to establish national capitals there. The two governments would, however, be bound to demilitarize the area under their jurisdiction, to establish it as a free economic zone and to permit free circulation of the population.
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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.