Consul-General Paul Knabenshue in Baghdad is seeking to arrange with an unnamed foreign shipping line for repatriation of 500 American Jews caught in Palestine by the spread of the war to the Near East, the State Department said today.
Negotiations with the line are still in the discussion stage, officials said. They strongly indicated an arrangement for an increase in shipping facilities by foreign flag lines was the only hope of effecting immediate repatriation of the 500 United States citizens in Palestine and the estimated 3,500 others elsewhere in the Near East.
It was pointed out that airline travel to India, the only alternative, was impossible because of the large number desiring passage.
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