Yemen Mission Delayed

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30154, 11 June 1963, Page 13

Yemen Mission Delayed

IN Z P A -Muter—Copyright) NEW YORK, June 10.

1 h e SecretaryGeneral of the L'nited Nations (1) Thant) has delayed sending a peace-keeping mission to Yemen while the Securitv Council discusses the question.

At Soviet insistence, a special session of the council has been called for today to discuss the Secretary-Gen-eral’s proposal The observers were to have been sent under a '•disengagement" pact between the

U.iited Arab Republic and Saudi Arabia Britain, France and the United States had hoped that the mission might be set up -without a council vote However the chief Soviet delegate Dr Nikolai Fedorenko on Saturday called for a meeting of the council Neither the U.A R nor Saudi Arabia is expected to participate in today’s meeting. although they have agreed to share the estimated 400.000 dollars’ cost of keeping a 200-man United Nations mission in Yemen for two months Both nations and Yemeni Republican authorities have agreed to the stationing of United Nations observers in a 12-mile demilitarised zone straddling the Yemeni-Saudi Arabian frontier as part of

the “disengagement" accord negotiated last month Tension has been caused m the area by Saudi Arabian support of the deposed Royalisn regime in Yemen and the Arab Republic's military backing of the present Republican authorities The Soviet Union nas insisted that peace-keeping operations involving costs on the United Nations must be authorised by ’he council and it was believed that Russian adherence to this principle had prompted the demand for today's meeting. Diplomatic sources said Stere was no guarantee the United Nations operation in Yemen could be wound up after two months, and that U Thant himself had originally suggested a four-month period.