The trusteeship committee of the United Nations Conference faced new complications regarding the Palestine issue today as a result of a sudden request by the Soviet delegation, asking elimination from the trusteeship proposals of the paragraph which Jewish leaders considered a guarantee that no action would be taken under the trusteeship system which might pre judice Jewish rights in Palestine and Jewish immigration into Palestine. The British and American delegations indicated that they would oppose the Russian request.
The paragraph to which the Soviet delegation took exception was jointly supported last Thursday at a meeting of the trusteeship committee by the United States, England, France, China and other countries in opposition to the Arab delegates who offered amendments modifying it. All the Arab amendments were defeated by a large majority. The Iraq delegation, however, indicated that it is preparing a new amendment.
Since Thursday, three sessions of the trusteeship committee were scheduled to have taken place, but all were cancelled. The Arab delegations in the meantime, are endeavoring to influence delegations from other countrie to vote for the Iraq amendment whenever it comes up.
The elimination of the controversial paragraph from the trusteeship proposal, as requested by the Soviet delegation, would automatically eliminate all Arab objections, but would be considered a blow to Jewish efforts at San Francisco which were directed at making certain that nothing prejudicial to Jewish rights in Palestine and to Jewish Immigration into Palestine should come out of the United Nations Conference.
The Soviet request was submitted yesterday at a meeting of the Big Five. The paragraph which the Soviets seek to elimanate from the trusteeship proposal has become known here as the “Palestine amendment” even though the Palestine question was never directly discussed at the United Nations Conference and the word “Palestine” was never rectioned in any of its committees. It reads as follows:
“Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship arrangements placing each territory under the trusteeship system, nothing in this chapter should be construed, in and of itself, to alter in any manner the rights of any State or any peoples in any territory or the terms of any mandates.”
U. S. DELEGATION BELIEVES DIFFICULTIES WITH RUSSIA WILL BE SETTLED
A meeting of the trusteeship committee which was to have taken place last night. was called off five minutes before the scheduled time as a result of the Soviet request for elimination of the disputed paragraph. But a leading official of the United States delegation today said that in spite of various difficulties, the differences
The British attitude towards the Soviet request is that nothing must be done to elter the provisions of the Palestine or any other mandate of the League of Nations since these mandates represent contraotual relationship between the peoples in the mantained territories and the mandatory power. It cannot be permitted, British delegates pointed out today, that these contractual obligations be broken by decisions of any international body as long as the fate of the mandate is not decided.
The general feeling among the members of the United States delegation is that the Arab manipulations here will fail and that any amendment which Iraq or other Arab state may offer with a view to curbing Jewish rights in Palestine will be defeated by the trusteeship committee.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
