Acting on the request of the United States, Kuwait and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Security Council decided today to postpone until Aug. 23 its debate on Palestinian rights, a United Nations spokesman said today. Sources here said that the delay was apparently due to the fact that the Arabs have not succeeded in persuading the U.S. not to veto a Kuwait-sponsored, PLO-inspired resolution urging the Security Council to support the right of the Palestinian people to “self-determination.”
According to diplomatic sources here, the unusual cooperation between the PLO and the U.S. in requesting the delay of the Council meeting is a result of “the quiet, betted-the-scenes” contacts between American officials and the PLO. Diplomats explained that a U.S. veto in the Security Council — as Israel vigorously requested — could have an adverse effect on the present PLO-American contacts. “It there-fore can be assumed that the PLO and the U.S. agreed to postpone the Council meeting and continue with the delicate contacts,” a diplomat here explained.
A vote on that resolution had been expected today or tomorrow. It emerged from the recommendations of the General Assembly’s special committee on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, a 23-nation body which Israel does not recognize. The committee called for Israel’s withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories, the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Arab refugees to the homes they left in what is now Israel. The Kuwait resolution omitted those points in what was viewed as an attempt to avoid a U.S. veto.
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.
