United Nations to Spend $34,000,000 on Arab Refugees in 1963

Twenty-five members of the United Nations today pledged a total of $32,400,000 for next year’s budget of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the arm that provides aid to the refugees. Payments for operation of UNRWA are made on a voluntary basis. The United States has consistently paid 70 percent of UNRWA’s total costs. Next year’s UNRWA budget had been set at a total of $34,000,000.

In announcing that it will continue to support UNRWA, the United States gave notice that it felt that the operations of the agency should be reviewed from year to year, and asked the “host” governments of the countries where the refugees live–meaning Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon–to give more aid to UNRWA and to help “rectify” the relief rolls. UNRWA had admitted that there are at least 100,000 dead on the relief rolls.

In another action, the Assembly’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee voted an average monthly allocation of $1,580,000 up to next June 30, to the United Nations Emergency Force. UNEF is the peace-keeping body on duty in the Gaza Strip, on Israel’s border, and at Sharm el-Sheikh, overlooking the Gulf of Akaba.

Israel was today again elected to membership on the Peace Observation Committee, on which she has held membership for years. Israel’s delegation chairman, Michael S. Comay, represents his government on that vital “watchdog” committee. Mrs. Zena Harman, of Israel, wife of Avraham Harman, Ambassador to Washington, was reelected by acclamation by the United Nations Children’s Fund to the post of program committee chairman. In the Economic and Social Council, Israel was elected for the first time to membership on ECOSOC’s Housing Committee.