Chairman Hubert H. Humphrey of the Senate Foreign Relations Near Eastern Subcommittee today urged that Israel Prime Minister David Ben Gurion be included in any United Nations summit conference on the Middle East.
Sen. Humphrey urged also that President Nasser of the United Arab Republic attend. He said a summit conference involving Nasser and Ben Gurion offered a chance to clarify the whole relationship of Arab-Israel borders and the Arab refugee problem. “We would be anything but realistic if we did not insist on including Israel in the talks,” he stated.
Sen. Humphrey, a Minnesota Democrat, said: “This conference offers the first opportunity we have had to do something constructive to work out a solution for the Arab-Israel dispute which is the seed bed for problems in the Middle East.” He told newsmen that “the relations between Israel and the Arab states are at the root of the problem, rather than the question of United States-Soviet relations about which we have talked so much.”
A number of other Senators also suggested today that Israel had a right to be included in the proposed United Nations summit conference since the Soviet Union has insisted on participation of Arab leaders.
Sen. Bourke B. Hickenlooper, Iowa Republican appointed by President Eisenhower to membership in the new U.S. delegation to the United Nations, said he considers it with in the province of the Security Council to invite any country to sit in at the summit meeting. He said Israel and other countries with an interest in the area should be invited.
Sen. Mike Mansfield, Montana Democrat, also appointed to the UN delegation today, said he does not believe the Arabs, as active participants in the Middle East dispute, ought to be included in the summit meeting. Both Senators were named by the White House as nominees for U.S. delegation to the 13th session of the UN General Assembly.
Sen. John Sherman Cooper, former U.S. Ambassador to India, said the United States should insist that Israel be invited to attend the session. The Kentucky Republican said that under the United Nations Charter any country affected has a right to be present and heard. Sen. Cooper said the discussion should cover the whole range of Middle Eastern problems, including arms shipments to the area, infiltration and subversion.
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