Sen. Mike Mansfield, Montana Democrat, said today in a report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States cannot accomplish anything in the Middle East “until constructive and positive action is taken to eliminate the Israel-Arab issue.”
The Senator said: “One of our first undertakings should be to convince the Arab countries that their special interests will be better served by acting in their own behalf as independent, sovereign countries than by allowing Nasser to use them through the Arab League as tools for Egyptian foreign policy.”
Sen. Mansfield asserted that although an economic plan for Middle East development advanced by Italian Foreign Minister Giuseppe V. Pella met with State Department objections, “the essential idea of the fund deserves serious consideration,” He said that American “identification in Arab minds with the cause of Israel has undoubtedly handicapped to some degree United States overtures to the Arab world. Being unhampered by the same considerations animating us in this matter, the Soviet Union, though first to recognize the new State of Israel, has felt free to advocate its extinction.”
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