U.N. Promise To Help To Clear The Canal

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28130, 20 November 1956, Page 15

U.N. Promise To Help To Clear The Canal

NEW YORK, November 18. A pledge of United Nq lions agreement in principle to help Egypt clear the Suez Canal of sunken ships was extended by Mr Hammarskjold, the United Nations Secretary-General, winding up his talks in Cairo today, said an Ametican Associated Press dispatch from Cairo. Mr Hammarskjold left by air for New York where he is to set machinery in motion for the salvage job and report to the General Assembly on the outcome of his assignment to establish peace and order. Mr Hammarskjold had talked for three days with President Nasser and other Egyptian leaders on the work of the United Nations police force which now has more than 500 men in the Canal Zone, and other details related to the cease fire ordered between the Egyptians, on the one hand and Britain. France and Israel on the other, 10 days ago. A spokesman for Mr Hammarskjold made public the agreement in a statement issued shortly before the Secretary-General boarded the aircraft for his trip back through Rome. “In the course of conversations held between the government of Egypt and the Secretary-General.” the statement said, “the Government of Egypt requested the assistance of the ’United Nations in the clearing of obstructions in the Suez Canal, to start immediately upon the re-establishment of normal conditions in Port Said and the canal

area, including the withdrawal of nonEgyptian forces. “On the basis of the previous relevant decisions of the General Assembly, the Secretary-General declared that the United Nations, in principle, is willing to assume the task, and that on his return to New York on Monday morning, steps will be taken at once to prepare such assistance. Britain and France have demanded a guarantee for reopening of the canal.

One of their conditions in agreeing to the cease-fire was that the United Nations Police Force should be completed to secure and supervise the reopening of the canal. They offered to do the job themselves but the Egyptians objected and the Russians backed them up. In Moscow, the Soviet Government newspaper “Izvestia” said today the British and French had in fact already started clearing the channel and declared. “These actions are of an obviously provocative nature.” In reference by Mr Hammarskjold’s s' okesman to the “withdrawal of nonEgyptian forces” in returning the canal zone to normalcy stirred speculation as to whether it was meant to include the police force, made up of the troops of several nations. A United Nations spokesman in New York said it did not. The phrase covered only the British and the French.

There was no expansion from Mr Hammarskjold on any of the topics

in his short stay in Rome. .He brushed aside questions with the declaration: “I have absolutely nothing to say.”

The Egyptian Foreign Minister. Mr Mahmoud Fawzi. said just before he left Cairo for New York: “The talks between Mr Hammarskjold and President Nasser were clarifying. The situation was examined from both a political and technical point of view.”

He said the Egyptians still held firmly to their position that the British and French troops must withdraw before work could begin on clearing the canal of obstruction. A minor exodus of Communist technicians from Egypt continued. A group of about 150 arrived at Brussels from Egypt today and proceeded on to Prague. Brussels airfield police said that all carried Czechoslovak passports. This was at least the third movement of the kind since shooting broke out in the Middle East on October 29.

Those who passed through Brussels previously were identified as Russians, the American Associated Press said in a dispatch from Rome.