Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Abba Eban today bracketed the Soviet Union with the Big Three Western Powers in calling upon the leading members of the United Nations to join in guaranteeing the territorial integrity of all Middle Eastern states, including Israel.
Addressing 100 representatives of newspapers, radio and television at the Overseas Press Club here, Mr. Ebar. deplored the renewed calls for war against Israel voiced by the Arab states, and said: “It would be salutary if the United States, the USSR, Britain and France would reconfirm the territorial integrity of all the states in the Middle East. Such a reaffirmation could play a decisive role in ending the tensions in that region of the world.”
Asked to comment on a statement made in the House of Commons yesterday by Britain’s Premier Harold Wilson, who had stated that Britain would like to see an agreement that would make the Middle East a nuclear free zone, Mr. Eban replied:
“That attitude on the part of Great Britain is new to me. I heard nothing like that in my recent conference with the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Patrick Gordon Walker. Denuclearization of the Middle East would, of course, be welcome. But the immediate problem in our region is not denuclearization, since there are no nuclear arms in the Middle East. The immediate problem is, rather, the stabilization of the balance of arms and the avoidance of the escalation of conventional arms in the region.”
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.
