United Nations agencies concerned with freeing the 15 merchant ships stranded in the Suez Canal since last June, are leaving the next move up to Egypt, it was learned here today. There have been no new initiatives on the matter by Secretary General U Thant, Ll. Gen. Odd Bull, head of the U.N. cease-fire observer corps in the Middle East, or the U.N.’s special emissary, Ambassador Gunnar Jarring. They are all awaiting new proposals from Cairo which as yet have not been made.
(The Christian Science Monitor reported today that Britain has asked the United States to make “urgent representations” to Israel to end its opposition to Egyptian surveys aimed at unblocking the Suez Canal. The report added that “strong diplomatic moves are under way to reactivate clearing of the Suez Canal as a possible first step toward a Mideast settlement.”)
Egypt announced last week that she was suspending all operations preliminary to clearing the canal and blamed Israel for the impasse. Israel had agreed to an Egyptian survey of the southern end of the canal to determine if it could be cleared to permit the exit of the stranded ships. But Egypt, last Tuesday, attempted to send two survey crawl into the canal’s northern sector, in violation of the agreement with Israel. Under terms of the Egyptian-Israeli cease-fire agreement of last June, neither side can use or work in the canal without the other’s assent.
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