Suez Canal To Stay Closed

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31564, 29 December 1967, Page 7

Suez Canal To Stay Closed

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) CAIRO, December 28. The Suez Canal will stay closed in spite of the proposed release of 14 merchant ships trapped at the waterway’s southern end since the June war.

This was made clear today] by the Cairo newspaper, “All Ahram,” which reflects offi-| cial Egyptian thinking. The newspaper said the Foreign Minister (Mahmoud Riad) planned today to inform Mr Gunnar Jarring, the United Nations Middle East peace envoy, that Egypt would “do everything possible” to allow the ships out. Shortly before Mr Jarring flew in last night for two days of talks, an Egyptian Government official said the ships might be freed soon as a gesture of good will. Four of the ships in the Great Bitter Lakes are British. The others are West Ger-

man (two), Polish (two), Swedish (two), American. Bulgarian. Czechoslovakian and French.

A fifteenth vessel, an American tanker, is in Lake Timsah, about mid-way through the canal. “Al Ahram” said the release of the trapped ships did not mean the canal would be reopened for navigation. Many parts would remain closed because of ships sunk during the war.

It was Egypt’s view that the canal, for practical and political purposes, could not be reopened before traces of Israeli aggression were eliminated.

Egypt has said that she will not consider clearing or opening the canal until all Israeli troops have withdrawn from the Sinai Peninsula. “Al Ahram” said the Suez Canal Authority would carry out a general survey of the canal’s bed to locate sunken vessels and “strange bodies" which might have been dropped during the war.