A four-week conference of 46 countries of Africa and the Indian Ocean ended here yesterday with approval of three new air routes using Israeli facilities over strong objections by seven Arab members.
The plenary subcommittee of the International Civilian Aviation Organization approved the air routes and other recommendations to be submitted to the ICAO council in Montreal. The subject of the conference was a five-year civil air communication plan for the region.
The three new air routes are Nairobi (Kenya) to Teheran, already in operation, Nairobi to Tel Aviv and Kano (Nigeria) to Tel Aviv. The seven Arab delegations opposed fiercely inclusion of the three air routes in the technical plan. The Arabs suffered their first defeat on the issue when the other delegations brushed aside Arab warnings they would not allow such flights to pass over their territories. The vote was 13 to eight with 11 abstentions.
On Thursday, when the Arabs opposed inclusion of Israel in a plan for exchange of meteorological information, they were defeated by a vote of 12 to seven. The Israel delegation, composed of technicians, impressed the conference with their calm in dealing with verbal attacks of the Arab delegations. The results of the conference were expected to speed development of African-Asian air communication.
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