An estimated 500 telegrams of protest against Foreign Secretary Goerge Brown’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly were reported today to have been sent to Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Mr. Brown warned Israel in the U.N. Assembly last week not to annex Old Jerusalem. His speech was widely regarded as pro-Arab.
Many Labor Members of Parliament planned to challenge the speech at a party meeting this week as popular protests continued to mount. The Jewish Youth Emergency Committee, representing 40,000 British youth, sent a cable to the Foreign Secretary expressing a “sense of outrage at your statement,” A copy was sent to Mr. Wilson.
Foreign Secretary Brown, replying today in the House of Commons to members of Parliament who had criticized sharply his address to the U.N. Assembly, assured Parliament that he was not asking “for a return to a divided Jerusalem.”
Mr. Brown emphasized the urgent need “to begin at once to deal with practical problems” arising from the Arab-Israeli war, and noted that he had called on “all countries to refrain from throats or the use of force against the territorial integrity and independence of any other country.” Other elements in a final Israeli-Arab settlement, he said, must be “a long-overdue solution to the refugee problem, the necessity for free and innocent passage through international waterways for ships of all nations, and the urgent requirement of an agreement on limitation of arms to the Middle East area.”
Regarding Jerusalem, Mr. Brown said, after disclaiming an aim of returning the city to a divided status, “I do not forecast what the eventual arrangements might be. But, I repeat, any lasting settlement of which such arrangements formed a part must, among other things, recognize the right of all states to live in true dignity and true freedom.”
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.
