Gamal Abdel Nasser. President of the United Arab Republic, here to lead his country’s delegation to the General Assembly, is scheduled to confer in New York tomorrow with President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Colonel Nasser, who arrived at International Airport at Idlewild Friday for his first visit to the United States, spent the weekend conferring with other heads of government. Yesterday, he met with the Soviet Union’s Prime Minister, Nikita S. Khrushchev, at the latter’s Long Island weekend retreat. He had a long talk with Marshal Tito, President of Yugoslavia; conferred with Lebanon’s Premier Saeb Salaam; talked with Ghana’s President Kwame Nkmmah; met Dr. Nkrumah again today, at lunch; held a parley with Cuba’s Prime Minister Fidel Castro; and met with the Deputy Prime Minister of Afghanistan.
Today, Col. Nasser is expected to meet, in addition to President Eisenhower, also with Jawaharial Nehru, Prime Minister of India. Later this week, he will confer with President Sukarno of Indonesia.
Mr. Nehru arrived from India today. President Sukarno is coming to the United Nations this week. Another head of state to join the summit assemblage this week will be King Hussein of Jordan. He will be accompanied by Prime Minister Bahjat Talhouni, who succeeded the assassinated Premier Hazza Majali, whose death was blamed by King Hussein on a plot engineered by the UAR. King Hussein’s party will also include the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Musa Naser, as well as other officials and military aides.
No details of the Nasser-Khrushchev talks were revealed by the spokesmen for either of the statesmen. A spokesman for Col. Nasser said only that the UAR President will “say everything he has to say, when he addresses the General Assembly.” The UAR leader is expected to address the Assembly either Tuesday or Wednesday. One report from Mr. Khrushchev’s Long Island estate quoted the Soviet leader as saying, after Col. Nasser had departed, that the UAR leader “stands on the side of the U.S. and the rest of the Western world.”
Aside from the New York City and State Department security arrangements for guarding President Nasser–arrangements that New York has been taking in its stride during the past week, as heads of state from all over the world congregates for the UN Assembly session–there was no noticeable excitement surrounding the visit of the UAR President. Heads of the leading national Jewish organizations asked their members last week to avoid staging demonstrations against the UAR chief.
Official communiques issued after Col. Nasser’s meetings with Presidents Tito and Nkrumah avoided mentioning any of the specific issues that may have been discussed at the meetings, A joint communique issued by the spokesmen for Presidents Nasser and Tito mentioned only that they found “a similarity of views with regard to the importance of topical international problems.”
After Col. Nasser’s first meeting with President Nkrumah, a communique stated that “the two Presidents discussed matters of mutual concern, Including those of concern to Africa.” The communique added that some of the matters discussed are issues that will be taken up by the UN General Assembly.
ARAB DELEGATES COMPLAIN ON NKRUMAH’S STAND REGARDING RECOGNITION OF ISRAEL
Arab delegates here–including representatives of the United Arab Republic–complained to the Ghanaian delegation about remarks made in the Assembly last weekend by President Nkrumah. They were reportedly annoyed because Dr. Nkrumah had hinted that it was time the Arab states recognized Israel as a political “reality.”
Dr. Nkrumah, in his formal address to the Assembly, touched pointedly on the Middle East situation in general and, specifically, on the Arab-Israel disputes. After proposing that the UN set up a special study concerned with Middle East petroleum production, and expressing the view that the development of nuclear and ballistic weapons has minimized “the importance of the Middle East as a base for any struggle for the mastery of the world,” President Nkrumah declared:
“Nevertheless, even when this clash of economic interests had been resolved, there will still remain the burning issue of Arab-Israel relations in the Middle East. This is one of the thorniest problems facing this World Organization today and, unless a permanent and realistic solution is found, the danger of its developing into an armed conflict still remains.”
“The solution of the Middle East question,” President Nkrumah continued, “lies in the recognition of the political realities there. In the light of this, I submit that the United Nations should set up a committee to study and evolve a machinery in which it will be impossible for Israel to attack the Arab states and for the Arab states to attack Israel, and for some sort of arrangement to be made to keep the cold war out of the Middle East.”
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.
