State Department to Withhold Comment on Fulbright Message Until Careful Study Made

The State Department is “not in a position to comment” at this time on Sen. J.W. Fulbright’s proposal for a United Nations-imposed settlement in the Middle East and United States-guaranteed Israeli security. Department spokesman Robert J. McCloskey said today. The spokesman would say only that Sen. Fulbright had apparently given his plan “much thought” and that the State Department would “study it carefully.” He said he did not know if Israel had made a similar proposal to the U.S. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned today from diplomatic sources that the State Department did not know of the Fulbright proposal until Saturday. Attendance at the Senator’s press conference on Friday announcing his plan was by invitation only, it was reported. Sen. Fulbright formally delivered on the Senate floor today his 15,000-word proposal, the text of which was released in advance last Friday. His press secretary. Hoyt Purvis, said today that the proposal had been made “primarily as a possible contribution to the overall consideration of the problems of the Middle East, and beyond that as a means of stimulating in the Congress what should be done.”