The Soviet Union addressed a warning to the United Nations Security Council today that “so long as the forces of the aggressor (Israel) are on Arab territory, and so long as Israel, with reckless insolence, makes territorial and other claims on neighboring Arab countries, there will be no peace in the Middle East.” The Soviet communication asserted further that “the acts of military provocation being staged by Israel in the Suez Canal area demonstrate that the resumption of the war can be expected any day.”
The Soviet letter, signed by Ambassador Nikolai T. Fedorenko and addressed to the President of the Security Council, reviewed the recently adjourned emergency session of the General Assembly and said it had failed because of the attitude of the United States and some of its allies to take measures for the “elimination of the consequences of Israel’s aggression and the withdrawal of Israel’s forces from the seized Arab territories.”
As a result, the Soviet envoy asserted, “a crucially important task now faces the Security Council.” The letter, however, did not request a meeting of the Council, and it was generally assumed that the Russians would wait until after August 1, when the French delegation chief becomes Security Council president.
“The Security Council will have to take fully into account the desire of the majority of the states, clearly expressed at the Assembly session, to achieve a constructive solution of this problem and, first and foremost, the withdrawal of Israel’s forces from the Arab lands which they have seized,” the Soviet letter asserted. “The Soviet Government,” it added, “for its part, is prepared, as before, to cooperate with all peace-loving states in attaining that aim.”
The letter was interpreted here as a return to the Soviet hard line, temporarily abandoned in the last days of the General Assembly, when Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko tried to get acceptance of a resolution which did not condemn Israel as an aggressor and linked an Israeli withdrawal to an Arab recognition of Israel’s existence — a compromise which the Arabs indignantly rejected.
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