The United States has informed the Kingdom of Jordan that it was resuming economic aid to that country and would continue its annual contribution to the Jordanian budget. American aid to Jordan was suspended when Jordan entered the war against Israel last June. The American contribution to the Jordanian budget has been about $27 million a year.
Ambassador Findley Burns, it was announced here, has already delivered a check for $1.5 million to the Jordanian Foreign Ministry at Amman as a partial payment. State and Defense Department sources have disclosed that the question of renewing the supply of arms and aircraft to Jordan is “under review.”
A former American ambassador to Egypt, Richard H. Nolte, director of the Institute of Current World Affairs, has proposed to the State Department sweeping revision of American policy in the Middle East based on a hands off concept of non-intervention involving reduction of American political and financial commitments in the area.
He warned that the “one-sided official intervention by the U.S. in support of Israel and the overwhelming partisan private support of Americans for Israel have established the U.S. in Arab eyes as the unswerving champion of Zionism in spite of efforts by American officials to be fair and even-handed.”
Mr. Nolte recommended that the United States follow a hands off policy in the Arab-Israel dispute and, while continuing to permit private citizens to remit funds to individual countries, to grant tax exemption on charitable grounds only for “strictly humanitarian” contributions.
Among his other recommendations were that the United States gradually close out its support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, so that the primary responsibility for the refugees went to the countries concerned; that it terminate financial aid to King Hussein of Jordan and provide aid in future only through international auspices; that it make no effort to reestablish diplomatic relations with Egypt; and that it seek an end to the Middle East arms race and, in the interim, provide arms to Middle East countries through ordinary commercial sales on the same terms to all.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
