Israel, charging that Libya was behind the hijacking of an Air France plane to Uganda, the recent terrorist attack on passengers boarding an El Al plane in Istanbul and other terrorist atrocities, yesterday denounced the fact that the Libyan representative will be the president of the Security Council in September.
“What more blatant example could there be of the systematic cynical disregard of the Charter of the United Nations than the fact that the representative of Libya, the paymaster and instigator of international terror, will preside over the Security Council during the month of September,” Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog said in a letter to UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.
“Exactly four years after the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympiad, an accomplice to that crime will assume the presidency of the Security Council,” he stated.
The presidency of the Council is rotated automatically each month among its 15 members. But, Herzog noted that “Libya, a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by Colonel (Muammar) Qaddafi, whose hands are soaked in the blood of innocent victims of international and Arab terror throughout the world” is a member of the Council which is charged by the UN Charter with “the maintenance of international peace and security.”
“It is the considered view of the government of Israel that the time has been reached when the United Nations must take immediate and effective action in order to put an end to this intolerable situation.” Herzog said.
LISTS LIBYA’S ACTIONS
Herzog’s letter, which he asked to be circulated as an official document of both the Council and the General Assembly, contained a list of a dozen terrorist hijackings and other attacks in which Libya was involved from Sept. 8. 1971 through March 3, 1974.
In his letter the Israeli envoy centered on Libyan responsibility for the attack in Istanbul in which four El Al passengers were killed. He said that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an “integral part of the so-called Palestine Liberation Organization,” has claimed credit for both the Istanbul attack and the Air France hijacking to Entebbe. “The guiding force behind, these foul attacks is Libya,” Herzog said. “It bears responsibility together with the perpetrators for the criminal acts.”
Herzog declared that the active participation by Qaddafi and Libya “in planning, supporting and cooperating with Arab terrorist movements and with international terrorist movements not only against Israel but also against other countries in North Africa, in the Middle East and throughout the world is common knowledge.
“indeed Col. Qaddafi prided himself on this fact in his address, to the conference of non-aligned countries in Colombo on August 18, 1976. It is the official and systematic policy of the President of Libya to initiate and finance from the consider role income available from oil sales, acts of assassination, subversion, conspiracy and sabotage in countries outside Libya. These acts are carried out in blatant violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law.”
Herzog noted that even Egyptian President Anwar Sadat confirmed Libyan involvement in the Entebbe hijacking in an interview 10 days ago with the Kuwaiti newspaper, “A-Siyasseh.” Herzog quoted the paper as saying that Sadat declared that the hijacking of the French plane to Entebbe was arranged at a meeting which took place between Qaddafi and George Habash the leader of the PFLP, and that Qaddafi “paid the money and smuggled the arms to Athens in Libyan diplomatic pouches, and that the Libyan Embassy later turned over the arms to the hijackers.”
HIJACKERS IN EGYPT LINKED TO LIBYA
Herzog’s letter came as three terrorists yesterday hijacked an Egyptian airliner with more than 100 persons aboard on an internal flight shortly after takeoff from Cairo. The plane was recaptured by Egyptian commandos who stormed the plane at the airport in Luxor where it had landed.
Egyptian Prime Minister Mamdouh Salem charged that Qaddafi was behind the hijacking and that the three hijackers had been promised $250,000 in Egyptian money to bring the airliner to Libya. The hijackers, who were captured alive had threatened to blow up the plane and its passengers unless five prisoners held in Egyptian prisons on two assassination attempts were released. One hijacker had a Kuwaiti passport, the second a Jordanian passport and the third a Palestinian travel document.
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.
