Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has left uncertain whether she will support an American initiative to repeal the U.N. General Assembly’s 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism.
The prime minister has “dodged” the issue, according to Greville Janner, a Labor Party member of Parliament who is actively involved in the British Jewish community.
He was referring to Thatcher’s reply to a letter he sent asking her to support U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle’s recently announced drive to get the resolution rescinded.
She wrote to Janner that although the resolution is “repugnant,” repealing it would “not be a simple matter.”
“I suspect that the necessary voting majority will be forthcoming only if the repeal offers some substantial quid pro quo to the Arab side,” she wrote.
“That, sadly, is the way international relations are,” the prime minister added. “But there is no doubt about our total abhorrence of the resolution.”
Thatcher recalled in her letter to Janner that Britain had voted against the resolution and always dissociated itself from it.
“The fact that the General Assembly itself has not referred to it in any subsequent resolution is a fair indication that many others share our distaste for it,” she wrote.
Foreign Office sources said the resolution was “a monstrous slur” on Zionism, but rescinding it would be a “non-runner.”
An attempt to do that would raise difficult side issues at a time when all efforts should be concentrated on the Middle East peace process, the sources said.
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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.
