The United States may be under heavy pressure by the numerically overwhelmingly pro-Arab bloc in the United Nations to convince Israel that the fighting can end only when the Israelis return to the lines before the Six-Day War in 1967. Both at the White House and the State Department there are indications that the U.S. representatives at the UN are making no headway at all with the Communist, Arab and African countries hostile to Israel to find a way to end the fighting and bring about an overall settlement in the area.
State Department senior officials have made it plain that the U.S. effort to crystalize a consensus in the Security Council would have to be drafted so that it would not be vetoed and that would require Israel and the warring Arab states to agree on the time and place of a cease-fire. That in turn raises the question of whether the Security Council would arrange a cease-fire that would stop the fighting as of the time of agreement or whether it would go beyond that and try to establish a framework for negotiations.
(Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, in his first statement on the Middle East war since its outbreak, urged both sides today to “consider alternative courses before it is too late, so that fighting and bloodshed may cease.” Expressing deep concern over “the wider threat to international peace and security which this situation may create,” Waldheim appealed “to all the governments concerned to look urgently to the possibility of turning this tragic conflict into a starting point for a new effort at a real settlement.” He said they would find in the UN “the instrumentalities to assist them to go forward.”)
State Department spokesman Robert J. McCloskey admitted yesterday that the U.S. has stepped up its diplomatic activity and that it is proceeding on parallel lines with its efforts within the Council. He said that Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin have been in communication “at least once and sometimes more often each day” since the Arab attacks began Oct. 6.
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.
