Israel and the United States today blasted a draft resolution sponsored by 18 Third World countries in the General Assembly calling for sanctions against Israel “as long as it continues to occupy Arab territories and denies the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people.” Both Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Chaim Herzog, and the Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative, Ambassador W. Tapley Bennett Jr., referred to the draft as, “one sided” and biased and harmful to the pursuit of peace through negotiations in the Middle East.
The measure which requests the Security Council to implement all relevant resolutions of the Council and the General Assembly and to include the Palestine Liberation Organization in the process of working out a Mideast settlement, will come before the Assembly for a vote next Monday. Bennett served notice today that the U.S. will vote against it.
In the course of his remarks, the American envoy repeated the U.S. proposal for a preparatory conference of all six nations, parties to the Geneva conference, to “discuss agenda procedures, participation and other matters relevant to a resumption of the Geneva conference.”
WILL NOT BE BINDING ON ISRAEL
Herzog bitterly denounced the draft resolution and declared that if it is adopted Israel would not be bound by its terms. He branded the measure as “a one-sided, biased and discriminatory resolution which accords with the tradition of anti-Semitism and discrimination that has become the prevalent idiom in this world assembly.”
He charged that the measure eliminates any mention of negotiation and sets itself against the current process of peace-making in the Middle East. He said it was “an open and flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations” because it ignores the Charter article which says that “the organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members.”
Herzog reiterated Israel’s position that no progress can be achieved in the Middle East without negotiations and called on all delegates “whose purpose is to encourage the process of peacemaking in the Middle East to reject it out of hand in the interests of peace in this world.”
FURTHER SETTLEMENT IMPEDED
Bennett described the resolution as a “one sided condemnation of one of the parties to the Arab-Israeli dispute” and warned that “its departure from the accepted negotiating framework established by Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 makes further settlement between those parties more difficult.”
He observed that the draft calls on the Security Council “to implement certain resolutions that deal with problems that can be solved only by negotiations.” He stated that “the task before us all is to get to the serious work of negotiations among the parties in which real progress can be made. Resolutions such as the one before us can only exacerbate the situation.”
The American envoy said the U.S. was ready to help further negotiations between Syria and Israel and was ready “to consult and discuss the possibility of a reconvened Geneva conference.” He said “We are ready and willing to explore any. practical method to advance the cause of peace, including a preparatory conference of the original parties in the Geneva conference to discuss agenda procedures, participation and other matters relevant to a resumption of the Geneva conference.”
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