Zionist Delegation Visits State Dept.; Seeks Views on Dulles Statement

A delegation of the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs called at the State Department yesterday to seek further clarification of the recent Middle East policy statement by Secretary John Foster Dulles. In that statement, Mr. Dulles suggested that the United States and other countries might provide border guarantees for Israel and the Arab states after they had achieved a peace settlement.

The delegation met with John D. Jernigan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. The group consisted of Rabbi Philip Bernstein, chairman of the committee; Rabbi Irving Miller, chairman of the American Zionist Council; Louis Segal, member of the Jewish Agency executive, and I.L. Kenen, executive director of the committee.

Moscow radio broadcasts, monitored here, are concentrating on presenting the Arab opposition to the Dulles statement. In one of its broadcasts, the Moscow radio quotes Cairo reports that the Palestine Arab Higher Committee has criticized the Dulles plan as designed “to destroy all vestiges of the rights of the refugees and to set the stage for the Jews to occupy Palestine by the millions.” The Moscow radio also quotes the Cairo newspaper “Al Ahram” to the effect that the Secretary’s plan would kill the United Nations resolutions on Palestine and contradict the Bandung resolutions on the Near East.

While presenting the Arab view on the Dulles statement, the Moscow radio and the Soviet news agency Tass refrain from indicating Israel’s stand on the matter. Both Soviet organs also quote lengthily from Arab criticisms of the mission of Eric Johnston, President Eisenhower’s special envoy now in the Middle East seeking regional water cooperation. The Johnston trip is characterized as part of a “dangerous plan.”