The United Nations Security Council adjourned in the early hours of this morning after securing an apparently complete cease-fire on the Israel-Syrian front which brought the six-day Middle East war to an end. Earlier this weekend, Israel, Egypt and Jordan all reported that the Security Council cease-fire call was already in effect along their battle lines which had come to a halt at the Jordan River in the east and along the Suez Canal in the west.
As it adjourned after 2 a.m. this morning, the Council had before it two new resolutions aimed at ensuring “the safety, welfare and security of the inhabitants of the areas where military operations have taken place” and condemning “any and all violations of the cease-fire.” Hans R. Tabor of Denmark, this month’s president of the Council, announced just before the adjournment that the time of the next meeting of the Council would be set after consultations with members. He asked the members to hold themselves available in case an urgent meeting was requested.
The first of the new draft resolutions under study by the Council, submitted by Argentina, Brazil and Ethiopia, called upon the governments concerned to exercise “scrupulous respect for the humanitarian principles governing the treatment of prisoners of war and the protection of civilians.” The second new draft resolution, submitted by the United States, would “condemn any and all violations of the cease-fire” and would request the Secretary-General to order a full investigation of all reports of violations and report to the Council as soon as possible.
As the Council session last night went into the early morning hours, a sharp exchange developed between the Israeli delegate, Ambassador Gideon Rafael on the one hand and Nikolai Fedorenko of the USSR and Milko Tarabanov of Bulgaria on the other. The verbal clash started when Mr. Fedorenko, on a point of order, demanded that Mr. Rafael not be allowed to speak and attacked the Israeli delegate for earlier statements which he said were “lies.” The Council president rejected the Soviet demand, however, and gave Mr. Rafael the floor.
No sooner had Mr. Rafael begun his reply to the charges of the Soviet delegate, declaring that the latter spoke “like a prosecutor at the Moscow trials in the 1930’s,” when Mr. Tarabanov interrupted with the demand that the Israeli delegate “speak from the prisoner’s dock” and defended the Soviet Union as an early victim of Nazi aggression that had made great sacrifices for the world.
When he was finally allowed to continue, Mr. Rafael, after castigating Mr. Fedorenko “and his assistant prosecutor,” said that the Arab states had tried “to use the final solution which eluded Hitler,” and stressed that Egypt, Jordan and Syria, “one after another, had opened the hostilities against Israel.”
Earlier in the evening, Syrian delegate George Tomeh attacked United States delegate Arthur J. Goldberg. He said that it was difficult to say whether Ambassador Goldberg was speaking in the debate as the representative of the United States or the representative of “another country,” implying Israel, Mr. Goldberg dismissed the comment as “beneath contempt.”
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