U.N. Assembly Gets Resolution Reviving the Arab Refugee Problem

Five Moslem states, acting on behalf of the Arab bloc here, introduced a resolution today reviving the Arab refugee problem. The resolution demands that the General Assembly, next fall, establish an apparatus “to safeguard” Arab refugee property in Israel, and calls upon the Palestine Conciliation Commission to implement one clause in a 1948 resolution calling for repatriation of the Arab refugees to Israel territory or their compensation by Israel.

The resolution is sponsored by Afghanistan, the Federation of Malaya, Indonesia, Pakistan and Somalia. The draft was placed before the General Assembly’s Special Political Committee, and is expected to be subjected to debate beginning tomorrow afternoon.

For almost five months, the Arab bloc here has been demanding that the Western Powers, led by the United States, Britain and France back them on a resolution which would have established a custodian for Arab property in Israel and would have called for intensification of the work of the PCC possibly also for the expansion of the commission to include some Communist countries. The commission now consists of the United States, France and Turkey.

The West has been resisting the Arab push for a resolution, holding that no draft is needed on the Arab refugee problem this year, since the budget had already been fixed for the activities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The draft presented today points up the fact that the West is holding to its position on this issue.

General debate on the Arab refugee issue was completed in the Special Political Committee last November. The new resolution will give the Arab bloc and their Communist and Moslem backers an opportunity to revive that debate.