U.S. Asks Security Council to Order Palestine Truce and Call New Assembly Session

The U.S. Government today formally submitted to the U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate Arab-Jewish trace in Palestine and requesting the convocation of a special session of the General Assembly “to consider further the question of the future government of Palestine.” Discussion on the resolutions started today and will be resumed on Thursday.

Although no reference vas made in the resolutions to trusteeship for Palestine, U.S. delegate Warren Austin, who read the proposals at today’s session of the Council, said that the United States still holds “that a temporary trusteeship should be established to maintain the peace.” A formal proposal on trusteeship was not offered, he declared, because of “the exigencies of the time limits confronting the Security Council.” The Council’s work, he said, should not be delayed by debate over details of a temporary trusteeship.

Austin referred to President Truman’s latest statement regarding Palestine and emphasized the “urgent necessity” of exerting all efforts in the Security Council toward arranging a truce between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine. He made the following two points:

1. Violence and bloodshed must cease. “We must prevent anarchy,” he stated. “It is required to keep international peace. Cessation of hostilities is imperative.”

2. Both Jews and Arabs must be prepared to accept a truce involving suspension of political as well as military activity. The Jewish Agency and the Palestine Arab Higher Committee most send representatives empowered to enter into a definitive truce arrangement with the Security Council.

Soviet delegate Andrei Gromyko, the only speaker today, strongly op-posed the U.S. proposal for Palestine trusteeship and calling of special Assembly session. He pointed out that Austin, while asserting that partition could not be carried out by peaceful means, had not produced any facts or arguments to approve that something more than peaceful measures vas needed to implement partition.

It is apparent, continued Gromyko, that all the arguments of the United States were aimed at preparing the ground to bury the plan of partition” and to justify the ?ew American proposals. All the arguments of the U.S. representative were intended to justify the step of the U.S. Government “directed at the wrecking” of the partition decision and at its substitution by trusteeship, he declared.

GROMYKO SAYS PARTITION CAN BE IMPLEMENTED; CHARGES U.S. WITH “WRECKING” IT

Emphasizing that it was impossible to agree that partition could not be implemented by peaceful means, Gromyko said that “no one has ever proved this.” The Council, he added, had hardly discussed the question. Nor had it been discussed by the permanent Members. This point of view was not supported by any facts either he declared. It was unfounded for the very reason that the Council not only had not used all possible peaceful means but had not adopted a single decision at all aimed at assuring partition.

For the same reasons, said the Soviet representative, the assertions that the implementation of partition could involve graver sacrifices for the Palestine population than a trusteeship administration ware groundless. No foundation existed for such a conclusion, particularly taking into account the reaction caused by the new American proposals among the peoples of Palestine. “These sacrifices can be reduced only through prompt and effective creation of two states in Palestine” as outlined by the Assembly, Gromyko declared.

If the U.S. and some other countries “wrecked the implementation of partition and consider Palestine as a component element in their economic, military and strategic calculations,” then any decision on the future of Palestine, including trustee-ship, would mean the “transformation of Palestine into a field of dissension and struggle for the Jews and Arabs and will only increase the number of victims,” Gromyko continued. “All this gave reason for the conclusion that full responsibility for the killing of the decision to partition Palestine rests on the United States,” he stated.

The Soviet delegation, Gromyko asserted, did not see any reason for convening a special Assembly session. Such a session “would mean throwing the United Nations backwards, at least for a year with respect to the Palestine question, while our task is not that of moving backwards but of making progress and of Implementing the decision already adopted,” he pointed out.

FULL TEXT OF U.S. RESOLUTION ON PALESTINE TRUCE

The American resolution asking the Security Council to call upon the Jews and Arabs in Palestine for an immediate truce, reads as follows:

“The Security Council, in the exercise of its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, notes with grave concern the increasing violence in Palestine and believes that it is of the utmost urgency that an immediate truce be effected in Palestine;

“Calls upon the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Arab Higher Committee to make representatives available to the Security Council for the purpose of arranging a trace between the Arab and Jewish communities of Palestine and emphasizes the heavy responsibility which would fall upon any party failing to observe such a truce;

“Calls upon Arab and Jewish armed groups in Palestine to cease acts of violence immediately.”