The Security Council, which will hear Israel’s complaint against Egypt tomorrow afternoon, will have to consider more severe action than mere condemnation of Egypt for violation of the Council resolution of September 1, 1951, and the Israel-Egypt armistice agreement by its maintenance of a blockade of Israel-bound shipping, U. N, circles predicted today.
They pointed out that the Security Council has already condemned Egypt for illegally denying free passage to shipping through the Suez Canal and for violating the armistice by its blockade measures. In the face of this flouting of U. N. authority and intimations from Cairo that the Naguib regime will reject or ignore a new resolution, U. N, circles here commented, the Council action will have to go beyond a simple resolution.
Members of the Security Council, it was reported today, were discussing means of putting teeth into a new Council resolution. The possibility of sanctions also emerged in informed speculation. Except for the Korean situation, the Security Council has imposed sanctions in only one case – that of Spain in the first years of the U.N.’s existence. The problem, one delegate said today, was not to secure a majority for a resolution but of finding means to enforce a resolution.
Abba S. Eban, head of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations, conferred in Washington earlier this week with Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., head of the United States delegation, on the Suez Canal situation. Mr. Eban will present the Israeli case before the Council tomorrow. Israeli sources gave no indication whether Mr. Eban will ask the Council to impose sanctions on Egypt. It was made clear, however, that he will certainly point out that Egypt has consistently flouted Security Council orders, the armistice and all international obligations with respect to the Canal, and that there is no reason to assume now that Egypt will do otherwise without compulsion.
SUEZ CANAL BLOCKADE DEBATED IN COMMONS
(In London, today, former Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison reminded the Government in the House of Commons that Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, when a member of the opposition, had demanded that the British Navy be used to escort Israeli-bound British vessels through the Egyptian blockade at the Suez Canal.
(To Mr. Morrison’s query as to what had become of Mr. Eden’s advocacy of this course, Minister of State Selwyn Lloyd replied that Mr. Morrison himself had a measure of responsibility for dealing with that suggestion. Mr. Lloyd added that the question of the Egyptian blockade was now an international matter, not an issue on a national level.
(Mr. Lloyd further told the House that Britain had repeatedly informed Egypt that she did not recognize the Egyptian blacklisting of ships and said that refusal of facilities did not necessarily prevent passage through the Suez Canal by the blacklisted ships.)
EGYPTIANS CHARGE ISRAEL COMPLAINT TO U.N. IS “SPURIOUS”
The Egyptian delegation to the United Nations, in a press statement, tonight charged the Israel Government with filing a “spurious complain” against Egypt with the Security Council to cover up the “moral damage suffered by Israel as a result the recent condemnation of its butchery of innocent Arab men, women and children” at Kibya.
The Israeli complaint that Egypt is violating a Security Council resolution and the Israel-Egyptian armistice agreement by its blockade of the Suez Canal against Israel-bound shipping was characterized by the Egyptian statement as a “three-barrelled gun designed for Arab hatred-blazing, Israel’s censure-erasing, and Zionist fund-raising.”
“The significance of geographical distortions,” the statement continued, “spelt out at the very outset of an official memorandum to the Security Council by calling the Gulf of Aqaba that of Eilat, cannot fail to give rise to further misgivings regarding Zionist expansion in the Middle East.”
EGYPTIAN STATEMENT “RIDICULOUS.” ISRAELI DELEGATION SAYS
The Israeli delegation characterized the Egyptian statement as “one of the most ridiculous statements in international history and literature” and said it showed “a spirit of complete and intransigeant desperation.”
The statement, the Israelis charged, “failed to touch in any substantive manner upon the central features of Israel’s complaint.” Egypt’s position, the Israelis declared, was defined by the Security Council in 1951 as an “illicit abuse of Egypt’s rights and obligations.”
The Israeli statement added that “Egypt now faces the just indignation of world opinion over this defiance of international law and arbitrary interference with the rights and interests of Israel and of other maritime countries.”
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