Sharett Says Israel Will Contribute to U.N. Fund for Arab Refugees

Israel Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett declared here today that Israel had a moral obligation as a United Nations member state to contribute to the proposed reintegration fund for assistance to Palestine refugees–adopted by a U.N. committee this morning–and a special obligation, which is to start paying compensation for abandoned Arab lands in Israel. “We are ready to do so on the understanding that this compensation will go into the reintegration fund,” he said.

Mr. Sharett appeared on a nationwide radio interview program with U.N. correspondents. He said that Israel had taken in refugees running in numbers to five figures but that the country was no longer capable of absorbing additional members. He emphasized that vast opportunities, however, exist in the neighboring Arab states, where the refugees would in addition be reestablished under more congenial conditions.

Asked about the economic situation in the Middle East, he said that since Israel had no normal intercourse whatsover with its neighbors because of their economic boycott, Israel played a negligible role in the area economically. But, he added, the enforced isolation technique used by the Arab states against Israel was obsolete, when the sea and the air were free, so that Israel is closely linked with scores of countries and, if anything, the Arabs were losing much more than Israel by the blockade.

Expatiating on Israel foreign policy and basic principles, he stressed Israel’s independence between the two major power blocs, but pointed out that Israel was positively following the road of democracy within the country, which, he said, included the “best traditions of what is called western democracy–freedom of speech and conscience and movement.”