Senate Delays Action on Anti-france Resolution

Acting at the request of Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Sparkman (D., Ala.), the Senate agreed unanimously yesterday to delay action on the committee’s resolution critical of France for releasing the Palestinian terrorist, Abu Daoud. Sen. Jacob K. Javits, (R., NY), who supported Sparkman’s request for delay, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “I have little doubt a resolution will be passed this week by the Senate.”

Sparkman’s request apparently was based on his desire to have the committee examine materials on the case received from the American Embassy in Paris. French Ambassador Jacques Kosciusko-Morizet was reported to have asked the Senate leaders not to adopt the resolution or to soften it. The envoy’s action raised eyebrows at the Capital since the French government had complained that the U.S. was intervening in France’s internal affairs by expressing dismay at the release of Daoud.

The French Embassy told the JTA that the French Ambassador met yesterday with nine House members and had written Sparkman and other Senators protesting Congressional action against France. The Embassy spokesman noted that in the worst times of Franco-American relations the French Embassy had never condemned nor intervened in the process of U.S. activities, including those in Vietnam. The envoy was also reported by the spokesman as having said that Israel had no right to gain extradition of Daoud and that West Germany had deprived itself of the right by its delay in requesting it.

The French spokesman said the Congressmen with whom the ambassador met included Reps. Toby Moffett (D. Conn.), Theodore Weiss (D. NY), Millicent Fenwick (R. NJ) and John Buchanan (R. Ala.).

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Thursday adopted a sense of the Senate resolution sponsored by Sen. Clifford Case (R. NJ) and Hubert H. Humphrey (D. Minn). It said that the release of Daoud is “harmful to the efforts of the community of nations to stamp out international terrorism” and urged the U.S. government to introduce and support a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly to that effect. A Capital source said yesterday that the Senate Committee probably will send the resolution to the full Senate by the end of this week.

HOUSE ACTION UNDER WAY

In a related action, many Congressmen took the floor in the House today in support of a sense-of-the-House resolution declaring that the “release of Abu Daoud by the Government of France was both premature and unjustified” and that “such action should be strongly condemned.” The measure, introduced by Reps. Robert Edgar (D. Pa.) and Paul Tsongas (D. Mass.), is co-sponsored by 68 other Congressmen of both parties, including 16 Republicans. It is expected to be acted on next week.

Meanwhile, House members took offense to the intervention by the French Embassy here against Congressional action critical of the freeing of Daoud. Rep. Andrew Maguire (D. NJ) called for rejection of the French protest. He said the case against the French government was “devastating” but observed that there is “no question of taking issue with action by the French government but the position taken by the Government of France in front of that court,” meaning the Paris appeals court that freed Daoud.

Maguire told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency later that France’s defense of its action was based on three questionable points. One was that France interprets its own laws. But. Maguire charged, the French government has “taken refuge in every technicality and ambiguity in the law to move Daoud out of the country.” He also accused France of taking refuge in judicial action whereas the French government “acquiesced with Daoud’s attorneys without waiting for clarification by the German government” which sought his extradition.

Finally, Maguire said, the French government insists that the Daoud case is a domestic issue and that other countries cannot inject themselves into it. On the contrary, he said, “we are emphatically dealing here with an international issue and international conventions that is the concern of other countries.”