Rouse Committee Amends Foreign Aid Bill to Check Arab Blockade

The House Foreign Affairs Committee today adopted an amendment to the Foreign Aid bill, calling upon the President to ensure that no foreign aid given by the United States endangers the principle of freedom of navigation. In the form of a Joint Resolution, the amendment would express outright United States opposition to Arab blockade and economic restrictions in the Suez Canal and elsewhere.

Declaring that America’s “traditional” policy of freedom of the seas “is presently being violated,” and stating that the United States “deplores such violations, ” the amendment declares it the sense of Congress that the purposes of the Mutual Security Act would be negated, and the peace of the world endangered, if nations receiving assistance under the Act “wage economic warfare against other nations assisted under this Act, including such procedures as boycotts, blockades, or the restriction of the use of international waterways. “

The amendment specifics further that “in all negotiations between the United States and any foreign State, arising as a result of funds appropriated under the Act or arising under the Agriculture Trade and Assistance Act, the principles shall be applied as the President may determine. ” The measure calls upon the President to report on measures he has taken to implement the principles.

Reference to the Agriculture Act indicates that the committee had in mind Arab, anti-Israeli discriminations like the one requiring that ships bringing United States agricultural surpluses to Arab ports must be vessels that do not trade in Israeli ports.

The amendment had been originally submitted by Rep. Leonard Farbstein of New York. Today, the measure was co-sponsored in the committee by another member of the Foreign Affairs group, Rep. Wayne Hays, of Ohio. Both are Democrats.