Israel, backed by the United States, defended itself at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Governing Council here Monday against a move by Syria and Libya to have the 33-member body condemn the Israel Air Force interception of a private Libyan plane which Israel had reason to believe was carrying Palestinian terrorist leaders. Israel, at the same time, charged Libya with threatening Israeli civilian aircraft.
The interception occurred on February 4 when a Libyan Grumman Gulfstream executive jet enroute from Benghazi, Libya to Damascus, was forced to land at an Israeli Air Force base for an identity check of its nine passengers and three crew members.
The passengers turned out to be Syrian political figures returning from a meeting in Tripoli, Libya, and the plane was released after 41/2 hours to complete its flight.
The discussion at the ICAO Governing Council meeting focussed on whether the Libyan aircraft was on State or civilian business when it was intercepted over the Mediterranean. Israel contends it was on official business and therefore was not covered by the 1944 Chicago Convention on international law governing civil aviation.
STATEMENT BY U.S. DELEGATE
The U.S. was the only country to defend the Israeli action. The American delegate Edmund Stohr maintained the interception was justified in light of Libya’s reputation as a refuge for “resistance fighters.” He stated that “as a general principle, the U.S. opposes the interception of civilian aircraft but concern for aviation security does not mean terrorists have a sanctuary in aircraft.”
The Soviet delegate, Valery Sinjushkin, denounced the interception as “piratical” and “state terrorism.” Condemnations in a similar vein were voiced by the delegates from Algeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Indonesia, Czechoslovakia, Lebanon, China, Iraq and Egypt.
Last October, an Egyptian commercial airliner carrying Palestinian terrorists believed responsible for the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and the murder of one of its passengers, Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly American Jew, was forced by U.S. fighter planes to land at an airbase in Sicily.
ISRAEL STATES ITS POSITION
The Israeli delegation, headed by Jacob Aviad, Israel’s Consul General in Montreal and its permanent representative to the ICAO, asked the President of the Governing Council, Dr. Assad Kotaite of Lebanon, to circulate to all ICAO member states a letter signed by Israel’s Minister of Transportation, Haim Corfu.
The letter cites numerous threats by the Libyan government and by Libya’s ruler, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, to attack Israeli civilian planes flying over the Mediterranean and force them to land in Libya in order “to discover Israeli terrorists against Libya.”
The letter states that “such threats constitute a grave and permanent danger to the security of passengers and represent a flagrant violation of the Chicago Convention.”
The ICAO, headquartered in Montreal, is a United Nations agency. Israel, Syria and Libya are members but do not sit on its Governing Council.
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.
