The state Department disclosed today that it had communicated the views of the United States to Israel on the incident involving an Israel fighter plane and a Jordan civilian airliner and had made it clear that a nation like Israel, which had lost a commercial airliner when it strayed accidentally over the Bulgarian frontier in 1995, should exercise restraint in firing on commercial planes. Department officials indicated that the American protest was a routine matter and that exceptional importance was not attached to the issue.
The Times of London said today in a Beirut dispatch that some unusually sharp notes had passed from Secretary of State Dulles to Premier Ben Gurion on the incident with the American warning that “unprovoked attacks” on passenger planes cannot be tolerated. The Times correspondent said the notes pointed out that Air Jordan, operator of the plane that was attacked was 50 percent American-owned and its planes are operated largely by American crews.)
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