Anglo-u.s. Discussions on Palestine Proceeding Simultaneously in London, Washington

The Anglo-American discussions on the British procedure for referring the Palestine issue to the United Nations have been extended from London to Washington, a Foreign Office spokesman told the JTA today.

He said that in addition to the talks between the Foreign Office and the U.S. Embassy here, the British Embassy is conducting similar talks with the State Department. The spokesman disclosed that the scope of the discussions include the proposed U.N. fact-finding commission — with the Arab opposition to this plan being taken into account — and also the possibility of a special General Assembly meeting on Palestine.

The Foreign Office official said that he did not think that any other matters were being discussed, but in other quarters it was learned that there is a strong possibility that America may take the opportunity to bring up the question of an increase in the immigration quota for Jews.

(The State Department today confirmed that discussions are under way in Washington concerning presentation of the Palestine issue to the U.N. Views are being exchanged between the Department and the British Embassy, supplementary to talks which were initiated in London between the American Embassy and the Foreign office, a Department spokesman said. He reiterated the American hope that the issue can be brought before the U.N. prior to the September meeting of the General Assembly.)

COLONIAL OFFICE DISCLAIMS INTENTION OF CHALLENGING AGENCY’S STATUS

The Colonial Office said today that it had no knowledge of any intention by the government to question the legal status of the Jewish Agency. Dismissing rumors to this effect, which have been circulating in Palestine, a Colonial Office spokesman declared that the government would not challenge the fact that the Agency executive was chosen by the Zionist Congress, rather than by the Agency Council, which has not met since 1939. He said that the official viewpoint was that if it was impossible for various reasons to convene an enlarged Agency Council, its functions reverted to the World Zionist Organization.

For the second successive day, major articles charging American Zionists with unjustifiably castigating Britain over the Palestine issue and with creating anti-Semitism in the United States through their tactics are featured in the London press. Following a bitter blast yesterday by C.V.R. Thompson, the New York correspondent of the Daily Express, in which he charged that Zionists were preaching hatred of Britian and trying to provoke bloodshed in Palestine, T.B. Steals of the Daily Telegraph today cites 16 Zionist groups in the U.S. which, he says, pour daily anti-British diatribes into American newspaper offices.

Like Thompson, Steele concentrates most of his fire on the various groups affiliated with the Hebrew Committee of Liberation. He declares, however, that most Zionist propaganda is misleading, appealing to the emotional response of Americans, who can always be reached by an appeal of people struggling for their freedom. Steals claims the alleged growth of anti-Semitism in the U.S. is a result of Zionist.