DEBATE BEGINS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 145, 1 April 1948, Page 5

DEBATE BEGINS

U.S. Proposals on Palestine RUSSIA OPPOSES CHANGE (N.Z.P.A.—Copyright). NEW YORK, March 30. Mr Warren Austin . (United States) formally asked in the Security Council to-day that the Council call on Arabs and Jews in Palestine to cease acts of violence immediately and that the Jewish Agency and ' the Arab Higher Committee make available to the Council representatives to help to arrange a truce. In another resolution Mr ' Austin asked the Council to call a special session of the General Assembly “to consider further Palestine’s future government.” Mr Austin said that the United States adhered to its Palestine trusteeship proposal, but was not prepared to offer a specific resolution now. Mr Gromyko (Soviet) accused the United States of sacrificing the partition plan because of oil interests and strategic considerations. The United States, he said, had abandoned partition before the Security Council had adequately made an effort to find ii it could be made to work by peaceful means. The Soviet was not convinced that partition was unworkable. Mr Gromyko caw no grounds for calling a special session of the Assembly, and he doubted whether the trusteeship proposal would solve the problem. ' He said that the United States must bear full responsibility for killing partition. The American reversal of policy was a heavy blow to the United Nations, with which leading circles in the United States had ceased to, reckon long ago. * > The Council i adjourned the discussion until Thursday.

TWENTY-FOUR KILLED

CAIRO-HAIFA TRAIN BLOWN UP

(Rec. 10.30) JERUSALEM, Mar. 31. Twenty-four were killed and 60 injured when the Cairo train was blown up by an electrically-detonated landmine near Benyamina in Northern Palestine. The army authorities report that 40 British soldiers were on the train, but none lias yet been reported among the casualties It is officially stated that the casualties in the train explosion are now 40 dead and 60 injured. The casualties were mostly Arabs. The explosion separated the engine from the rest of the train and pushed it 100 yards along the track. It also derailed four coaches and ripped up the permanent way. The train, which was an express from Cairo to Haifa, was running through the orange-growing belt near Benyamina Settlement, 24 miles south of Haifa. Jewish sources said that Arabs fired on Jews who went to the scene of the explosion, forcing them to retire. Uninjured passengers helped the rescuers to carry the dead and injured from the shattered coaches and laid them alongside the track'. British military ambulances took the injured to Haifa Hospital. Jewish sources said -the Stern Gang blew up the train, adding that they believed that most of the , dead were members of the Arab liberation army. Another Jerusalem? message says that several hundred Arabs attacked a Jewish convoy from Tel-Aviv which was attempting to take food to the Jewish community in Jerusalem. The Arabs claimed that they surrounded the convoy and killed and wounded many Jews in the prolonged battle.