U.S. to Intensify Its Policy of Pursuing Arab Friendship

Highly placed sources here confirmed today that the United States Government definitely does not intend to grant free arms to Israel–such as were given to Iraq–during the new fiscal year which starts on July 1. However, they said that the State Department will continue its policy of permitting Israel to buy certain categories of military supplies in this country.

Israel Ambassador Abba Eban is expected to resume high level discussions of Israel’s security situation in the near future. In the meantime, State Department sources indicated that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles is fearful of making any security arrangements with Israel that may “antagonize” the Arabs. On the other hand he is planning to make new intensive efforts to persuade the Arab countries to join the West against Communism.

As a result of Arab collaboration with Communist China at the Bandung conference last month, State Department policy makers are now advancing the idea that it is in Israel’s own best interests to have the United States on friendly and cooperative terms with the Arab states rather than to permit an Arab arrangement with the Communist world “which might suddenly ring the Israeli borders with a solidly hung Iron Curtain based on bitterness” toward Israel, America, and the West.

The line being advanced here is that the Bandung Conference should convince Israel of the necessity” for America to arm Iraq and to take all other possible steps to bring Arab League elements into the Western alliance. Republican Congressmen who have been privately briefed in the wake of Bandung have been told that the conference served to effectively underscore the urgency for the United States pursuing Arab friendship.