Security Council Members to Get Israeli Request for Session on Cyprus Detainees Today

The Israeli Government will this week call on the U.N. Security Council to demand unconditional British release of some 13,000 Jewish refugees now forcibly detained on the island of Cyprus, it was indicated here today.

A formal demand for Council intervention has been prepared by Israeli’s U.N. delegate, Aubrey Eban, and will be circulated to Council members tomorrow through Council president Yacov Malik of the Soviet Union preliminary to a special Council session on the Israeli complaint.

According to authoritative information Malik is expected to act promptly on the Israeli request and convoke the Council some time this week. The Israeli note will demand that the British release the refugees to Israeli authorities who will make provisions for bringing them to Palestine.

In pressing the issue before the Council Israeli authorities here said they were taking supplementary action to the decision of the Council yesterday calling for an overall, long-range settlement of the entire Jewish-Arab problem arising from the postwar population tangle. The Israeli note is expected to stress the essential illegality of the British detention of Jews long after the termination of the British Mandate in Palestine which was the original excuse on which the British defended their action. The Israeli claim will be that the British action in holding the Cyrpus Jews is not in conformity with the provisions of the truce created by the Security Council. The Israeli note will reject the current British contention that release of the Jews would and to Israel’s military potential in violation of the spirit of the truce, as a unilateral decision contrary to the ruling of Palestine mediator Count Folke Bernadotte who already ruled that the admission of the Cyprus Jews would in no way undermine the cease-fire provisions in Palestine.