The Israel Cabinet today decided to mark time in regard to calling for a United Nations Security Council meeting on Egypt’s latest cargo confiscations in the Suez Canal, apparently assured that Western Powers are doing all they can diplomatically to get Egypt to release the seized cargoes.
Today’s special meeting of the Cabinet was concluded with the issuance of a communique that mentioned only the fact that Foreign Minister Golda Meir had reported about her trip to the United States and France, from which she returned this week-end.
The Government is understood to be still awaiting further information in regard to the diplomatic steps taken at Cairo by some of the Western Powers; by some of the countries –including West Germany and Ceylon–whose cargoes were seized; and by the United Nations Secretariat.
It is understood that the leading Western Powers view Egypt’s latest action, in seizing cargoes in foreign bottoms because the freight had originated in Israel, as a matter of grave importance going beyond the context of Israel-Arab disputes.
Some of the Western Powers are understood to be of the opinion that it would be best at this time not to give the Soviet Union the opportunity of posing again as “the Arabs’ best friend, ” a posture the USSR is fairly certain to take if the issue came to open debate in the Security Council. The West hopes it might continue pushing the United Arab Republic closer to the Western orbit.
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