Toon Urges Quiet Diplomacy in Protecting Israel in UN

President Ford’s Ambassadors-designate to the United Nations and to Israel were in conflict yesterday on how to meet the rising threat that the Arab states, backed by their Third World allies, will try to expel Israel from the United Nations General Assembly next fall, Daniel P. Moynihan, Ford’s nominee to succeed John Scali as America’s Permanent Representative to the UN, declared yesterday that the U.S., must issue a tough statement “now” that it will not tolerate even an “effort” to oust Israel from the General Assembly.

But Malcolm Toon, the career foreign service diplomat nominated to replace the late Ambassador Kenneth Keating in Tel Aviv, advocated “quiet diplomacy” to protect Israel’s status in the world organization. Both men expressed their views in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which is conducting hearings on their nominations,

Moynihan, a former U.S. Ambassador to India and former Harvard professor of political science, told the Senators he agreed fully with the position expressed by former UN Ambassador Arthur J, Goldberg that the U.S. should pull out of the General Assembly and freeze its financial contributions to the UN if action is taken against Israel, Toon, whose last previous diplomatic post was U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia said Moynihan’s approach to the “expulsion possibility” was “very undesirable.”

He claimed that the “tactics” suggested by Moynihan would be “less than helpful” because “a blunt statement now would produce confrontation” and create “something we wish to avoid. He suggested, instead, that the U.S. “work quietly behind the scenes with the more moderate” members of the Arab-led “non-aligned” nations and “let them work quietly” with other elements “to prevent the collision from faking place.” Toon said he wanted “this on the record.”

VOLUNTEERS STATEMENT

Toon made his statement voluntarily during the afternoon session of the Foreign Relations Committee. He had made no mention of Moynihan’s views while being questioned by committee members during the morning session. The fact that he emphasized that his comment was volunteered and that he wanted it incorporated into the official transcript of the hearing gave rise to speculation that Toon had been asked by the State Department, between the morning and afternoon committee sessions to offset the Moynihan view at a time when the Ford Administration is still occupied with its reassessment of Middle East policy. “Quiet diplomacy” advocated by Toon is in line with the approach Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger has always urged as the best means to persuade the Soviet Union to ease its emigration policies toward Jews and others.

Toon’s afternoon testimony was given under somewhat unusual circumstances as the only committee member present was Sen. Charles Percy (R.Ill.) who had been unable to attend the morning hearings, The Ambassador-designate to Israel appeared to disagree with Sen, Percy’s suggestion that “if we don’t have any contact with the PLO, getting somebody easier would be exceedingly slim.” Toon said it “certainly would be helpful” if PLO chieftain Yasir Arafat took a more amenable position toward Israel like some of his “Arab brethren” but he said he found “no evidence” that Arafat is “reasonable.”

REJECTS GUARANTEE FOR ISRAEL

Toon, whose diplomatic experience has been almost exclusively in the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries, rejected the idea of a possible U.S.-Soviet guarantee for Israel’s security. He said his “purely personal” estimate is that a “joint guarantee would have certain disadvantages.” He did not elaborate. Toon testified that it would be “helpful if the Arabs drop” their economic boycott of Israel and asserted that there are “good solid moral grounds for pressure on Egypt and the Arabs” to give up the boycott. He said he thought Israel’s decision to thin out its forces in Sinai was “very helpful” but cautioned that unless diplomatic movement continued either in a Geneva conference, step-by-step action or a combination of both within the next year, “the chance of war” would be “vastly increased.”