Egypt and Israel issued a cease-fire order to all their armed forces which went into effect last night, it was announced today at United Nations headquarters here. The order includes cessation of terrorist activities in Israel by Egyptian-trained commandos. It came as a result of the negotiations which have been conducted during the last week by UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjold with the Egyptian and Israel Governments.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., chairman of the United States delegation to the UN, who earlier this month proposed and pushed through the Security Council the resolution providing the mandate under which Mr. Hammarskjold has achieved this partial success of his mission, hailed the Egyptian-Israel move as “most welcome.” The cease-fire agreement, said Mr. Lodge, shows that Mr. Hammarskjold “is discharging well the mandate given him by the Security Council on April 4.” The agreement was also “welcomed” today by the State Department.
An official communique released by the United Nations truce supervision organization said: “At the request of the Secretary General of the United Nations, “the Governments of Israel and Egypt have notified him that as of 6 P. M., April 18, and from that time on, orders are in force to the effect that in implementation of assurances to observe Article 2, Paragraph 2 of the Armistice Agreement, no military or paramilitary forces, including non-regular forces, may shoot across the demarcation line or pass over that line for any purpose whatsoever.”
The paragraph referred to in the communique is a key clause in the armistice pact forbidding either side to commit any “warlike or hostile act.” It reads: “No element of the land, sea or air military or paramilitary forces of either party, including non-regular forces, shall commit any warlike or hostile act against the military or paramilitary forces of the other party, or against civilians in territory under the control of that party: or shall advance beyond or pass over for any purpose whatsoever the armistice demarcation line.”
This afternoon, according to a second communique issued here, Mr. Hammarskjold visited Premier Ben Gurion again, taking up two further points covered in the Security Council resolution. The discussions concerned “local arrangements along the Gaza strip” then went into “certain aspects of implementation” of the Israel-Jordan armistice agreement.
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