The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was briefed today on the Middle Eastern situation by top diplomatic and military officials. Acting Secretary of State Herbert Hoover, Jr., appeared before the committee.
Among other witnesses were Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Allen Dulles, director of the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, and William M. Rountree, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.
Senate Republican leader William Knowland said yesterday that the UN should invoke economic sanctions against Britain, France, and Israel if they continue to keep troops in Egypt. Sen. Knowland is a U. S. delegate to the United Nations General Assembly session.
A Middle East peace plan to include Egyptian renunciation of “its policy of extermination as regards Israel” and negotiation of an Israel-Egyptian “non-aggression pact” was advanced here today by Senator Mike Mansfield, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Montana Democrat, who has been critical of past U. S. policies in the Suez and Israel disputes, said the U. S. has been “unwilling to face the fact that there has been no peace in the Middle East not merely in past weeks, but over the past decade. There has been at best only a truce and a badly maintained truce,” he added. He urged the following principles of settlement:
1. Withdrawal of military forces by Israel, France and England from Egypt “whenever a UN force is prepared to assume responsibility for temporarily maintaining order, or whenever a settlement satisfactory to the belligerents is achieved.”
2. Establishment of machinery “to insure Egyptian sovereignty over its territory, and at the same time guarantee unhampered use of the Suez Canal to the ships of all nations; this machinery should be operative before control of the Canal Zone by UN forces is relinquished.”
3. Renunciation by Egypt of “its policy of extermination as regards Israel,” and negotiation of “a non-aggression pact” by the two nations.
4. Guarding of the Israel-Egypt border “by UN forces until such time as both nations agree to the withdrawal of such forces.” And “assistance for reconstruction and development in Egypt and neighboring states” by members of the United Nations.
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