Secretary-General U Thant rejected in the General Assembly emergency session today the criticism voiced yesterday by Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban regarding the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force from the Egyptian-Israel border in May.
In another statement, outside the Assembly, Mr. Thant also declared that the 1957 memorandum by the late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, which had interpreted the agreement on UNEF between the United Nations and Egypt as meaning that an Egyptian request for UNEF withdrawal would have to be referred to the General Assembly, was “a purely private” understanding by Mr. Hammarskjold and not binding either on the present Secretary-General or on Egypt.
Declaring that Mr. Eban’s remarks yesterday on the UNEF withdrawal were “highly critical” and “can be very damaging to the United Nations with regard to peace-keeping functions, past and present,” Mr. Thant told the General Assembly that he did not accept Mr. Eban’s “strictures” as having “validity.” He charged Israel with extending no cooperation on UNEF to the United Nations.
Mr. Thant said that Israel had “always and firmly refused” to accept UNEF on its territory “on the valid grounds of national sovereignty. There can be no doubt that it would have been a helpful factor of considerable importance if Israel had at any time accepted the deployment of UNEF also on its side of the line,” he said.
Mr. Thant told the Assembly that he had engaged in consultations before taking his decision for UNEF withdrawal. He further quoted Israel’s permanent U.N. representative. Ambassador Gideon Rafael, as having told the Security Council, on June 3 “the Secretary-General tried to prevent the crisis from getting out of hand. He failed. It was not his fault,” Mr. Thant concluded by informing the Assembly that within a day or two he would issue a report “giving a full account of my actions in this matter.”
In reference to Mr. Thant’s statement that he had consultations before the UNEF withdrawal decision, it was learned here today that a memorandum of his conversations with other U.N. officials indicated that Mr. Thant had agreed to withdraw UNEF before the Egyptian Government formally requested that action.
At the afternoon session, Mr. Eban replied to Mr. Thant’s strictures by declaring “I am certain that everything that was done by the Secretary-General in connection with the withdrawal of UNEF was done in good faith.” However, he said, the “few sentences” that he had spoken yesterday about the UNEF withdrawal were directed only at an effort to explore the legal and practical situation regarding the U.N. peace-keeping efforts. “Our objective,” he said, “was not recriminatory but aimed at an effort to look at the objective substantive situation.”
He also said that the issue was not one of debate between Israel and the Secretary-General with whom Israel is “friendly.” He quoted President Johnson as having said “we are dismayed with the withdrawal of UNEF without reference to the General Assembly or the Security Council.” Mr. Eban noted that similar statements were made by leaders of Britain, Canada and other countries and added that the point of view he expressed yesterday was “not specifically an Israeli view.”
After Mr. Eban’s statement on the issue, Abdul Rahman Pazhwak of Afghanistan, president of the General Assembly, made a statement on the matter, saying he wanted only to make clear this point: “In my understanding, and it is also the general understanding of the General Assembly, the good faith of the Secretary-General has not been questioned.”
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