Yosef Tekoah, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, said here yesterday that the Security Council has demonstrated once again that it could not “deal equitably with questions pertaining to the Middle Eastern situation.” Tekoah’s remarks came after the Security Council voted 11-0 with four abstentions for a British-French resolution that condemned Israel for its April 10 commando raids on terrorist headquarters in Lebanon.
The resolution also “deeply” deplored “all recent acts of violence resulting in the loss of life of innocent individuals and the endangering of international civil aviation”–the first direct criticism of Arab terrorist acts ever incorporated in a Security Council resolution and the factor that averted a United States veto.
Tekoah declared, however, that the Security Council had failed to recognize both Israel’s legitimate right of self-defense and the murder of innocent civilians by Arab terrorist gangs. He said it was incumbent on governments to protect their nationals against terrorism if the UN could not do so and promised that Israel would continue to protect its people from Arab murder attacks. Tekoah warned Lebanon that it must act to stop savage attacks against innocent civilians staged and organized from its territory.
The resolution which climaxed a week of bitter and acrimonious debate in the Security Council represented a compromise that apparently did not satisfy anyone. The Arab bloc expressed deep disappointment that the condemnation of the Israeli raids was not much stronger. The Soviet Ambassador, Yacov Malik, criticized the resolution for not including sanctions against Israel.
The American Ambassador. John Scali, said the U.S. abstained because the resolution still “focuses too much on the meaningless exercise of trying to parcel out blame. It falls short of meeting the full dimensions of the challenge.” There were indications in diplomatic circles, however, that the U.S. was privately satisfied with the outcome.
COUNCIL TO REVIEW MIDEAST SITUATION
Statements after the vote featured a sharp exchange between the U.S. and the USSR. Scali observed that “at this very moment” arms were being poured into the Middle East by “certain parties.” He said that the U.S., while having no intention to upset the military balance in the region, would continue to supply Israel with weapons for its legitimate self-defense needs.
Malik retorted that the Soviet Union could not accept U.S. arguments which, he said, equated acts of “desperate private people” with “aggression” by a state, nor the U.S. position that it was not arming Israel to commit such “acts of aggression.”
The war of words at the UN did not end with the closing yesterday of the Security Council. It is likely to be resumed at the end of next month when the Council will conduct a review of all UN efforts to end the Middle East crisis.
The Council agreed Friday to ask Secretary General Kurt Waldheim to prepare and submit a comprehensive report on the Middle East situation. “The proposal was offered by the Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed H. el-Zayyat. Waldheim promised that the report would be ready in 3-4 weeks and Zayyat asked the Security Council to meet again when the report is ready.
The Egyptians made the request after it became apparent that the Arab states were unable to achieve their aim of expanding the Council’s debate on the Israeli commando raids on Lebanon into a full-scale Middle East debate. Most of the efforts in the Council during the days leading up to yesterday’s vote on the British-French resolution were expended in trying to achieve a textual balance that would avert a Big Power veto.
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