Secretary of State Edmund Muskie was advised orally and by telegram by leading Senators to veto the UN Security Council resolution on Jerusalem.
Sen. Jacob Javits (R.NY) reached Muskie at his vacationing place in Maine Tuesday night and expressed displeasure at the Carter Administration’s planned abstention vote. Muskie’s reply, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned, was that the Administration had given a great deal of thought to the resolution.
Yesterday morning, 13 Senators led by Frank Church (D. Idaho), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Javits, its ranking minority member, urged Muskie by telegram to veto the resolution since it would invoke, for the first time, punitive actions against Israel.”
Noting the resolution refers to Jerusalem being in “the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since June 1967” and calls on countries with embassies in Jerusalem to move them, the Senators said U.S. policy “has never confessed Israel’s presence in West Jerusalem nor allowed one sided punitive actions against Israel to take effect in the Security Council.”
Joining Church and Javits in the telegram, which was hurriedly originated yesterday morning and rushed to Muskie, were Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D.NY), Richard Stone (D.Fla.), Robert Dole (R.Kons.), John Danforth (R,Mo.), Paul Laxalt (R.Nev.), Harrison Williams (D.NJ), Joseph Biden (D Del.), Bob Packwood (R. Ore.), Alan Cranston (D.Cal.), Richard Lugar (R.Ind.) and Paul Sorbanes (D.Md.).
MIDEAST PEACE PROSPECTS THWARTED
Today, at the Capital, Javits and Danforth spoke out again against the resolution and chastised the Carter Administration for not having vetoed it. The telegram had urged the U.S. to veto “this or any other resolution whose adoption and implementation can only serve the interests of those seeking to thwart the prospects for peace in the Middle East.”
Javits, in a news conference, said “When you take into consideration West Jerusalem, which has no connotation whatever of being other than on Israeli city and then see the commentatory nature of this resolution I must say that I feel very deeply that our country should have vetoed it rather than abstaining because abstaining still leaves it as a valid Security Council resolution. That’s all the difference between day and night.”
Donforth told the Senate, “The U.S. timidly stood aside while the UN Security Council once again proceeded to undermine the Camp David peace process.” Danforth pointed out that “no distinction” is mode in the resolution between East and West Jerusalem and “the U.S. never objected to Israel’s presence in West Jerusalem.” He said “Even the most hard-line interpretation” of Security Council Resolution 242 “recognizes Israeli authority over Jerusalem is within the Green Line” — the barbed wire line that divided Jerusalem before the Six-Day War.
“Now the UN is saying West Jerusalem has become part of the occupied territories,” Donforth said. “Only by assuming the use of Arab oil pressure can I give a reason for the Administration’s weak-kneed abstention as a slop at its own platform” — the Democratic Party’s platform adopted last week in New York which supports an undivided Jerusalem.
On Tuesday in the House of Representatives, a handful of Congressmen, mainly conservative Republicans, called for the U.S. to move its ### from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and charged the Carter Administration with reneging on promises of the Democratic Party.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
