U Thant Urged to Take Effective Action to Prevent Further Airline Disasters

Monroe Abbey, president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, has sent a telegram to United Nations Secretary-General U Thant urging strong and effective measures be taken to prevent acts of terrorism such as the one that caused the crash last Saturday of the Swiss airliner in which 47 persons were killed. Meanwhile, Air Canada has imposed a temporary delay in the shipment of all unaccompanied baggage earmarked for Israel. According to reports here, airline officials want a 24 to 48 hour “screening” of such baggage to make certain it does not contain any dangerous material.

In a separate telegram to Mitchell Sharp, Secretary of State for External Affairs of Canada, Mr. Abbey and Samuel Chait, president of the Federated Zionist Organizations of Canada, stated: “We request that the Canadian government press for the capture and prosecution of those responsible for this (the Swiss airliner explosion) reprehensible act and, further, to condemn any government which knowingly harbors organizations waging terror against innocent people.”

(In Ottowa, members of Parliament have expressed concern with the mounting Arab terrorism against civilian air travel and have called upon the government to condemn the attacks. Robert Stan-field MP, leader of the opposition, said there is an increasing international concern about the vulnerability of airlines to sabotage. “I want to know if the government is taking steps to improve safety regulations in civilian aviation to protect lives?” Donald Macdonald, president of the Privy Council, replied that “the government shares with other governments a strong feeling that action must be taken to assure safety of civilian air flights. Meetings are scheduled for later this week to discuss this problem. We will make clear that acts of this kind must be condemned.”)