Sharett Quits Geneva; Completes Appeals to Big Four Ministers

Premier Moshe Sharett of Israel left Geneva for Jerusalem today “with the feeling that the views of the Israel Government and the gravity of the situation which now faces our State have been fully and authoritatively represented in fairly lengthy conversations with the distinguished representatives of all the major powers.”

The Premier declined to detail what concrete results he had obtained from the foreign ministers of the four Great Powers, but diplomatic sources here tonight were confident that while he had secured nothing from Soviet Foreign Minister V.M. Molotov, he had assurances of some consideration by the United States, at least, of Israel’s paramount need for defensive weapons.

(The Times of London reported today from Geneva that it is clear that the Western Powers have declined, “for many understandable reasons, to give Israel the support which she has requested against her Arab neighbors.” It said that while Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan had declined Israel’s urgent request for arms, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, “who was under greater pressure at home, has evidently agreed that the United States would consider sympathetically the supply of some defensive weapons–notably, it seems, anti-submarine weapons.”)

WESTERN MINISTERS REPORTED IN AGREEMENT ON MIDDLE EAST POLICY

The foreign ministers of the Western Powers met privately today. They reportedly formulated a common policy on the Middle East aimed at avoiding an arms race which, they professed, would only arouse the area and intensify the possibility of war. Some favorable consideration, it was reported, would be extended to Israel’s plea for defensive arms and there would be an offer of a new tripartite declaration.

(Sen. Walter F. George, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview with the Atlanta Constitution by telephone from Vienna that “if the Big Three Powers, who may be joined by Russia, are firm about a treaty neutralizing Egypt and Israel, the crisis might be solved.”)

Mr. Sharett warned that “peace and security are indivisible and Israel cannot be abandoned to these aggressions and left to fight out its own survival on its own strength and determination without endangering the stability of the entire Middle East region. Israel,” Mr. Sharett told the press here before his departure, “is determined to fight back if she is attacked. For this, she has to get the means to restore the balance of arms in the Middle East and to deter aggression. This is our appeal to the world in this fateful hour.”

Mr. Sharett conferred last night for some 60 minutes with Mr. Molotov. The conversation was conducted in Russian, without interpreters. It is generally understood that Mr. Sharett neither asked for Communist arms nor for Soviet participation in a four-power guarantee of the territorial integrity of the Middle East countries. He is understood to have pointed out that the Communist shipment of arms to Middle East states was not in the “spirit of Geneva” and to have asked Mr. Molotov to halt these shipments. But he apparently failed on this and obtained no assurance that arms would not continue to flow to Egypt.