Suez Guarantee Sought

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31655, 16 April 1968, Page 15

Suez Guarantee Sought

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) CAIRO, April 15. The Egyptian Government has privately informed Western maritime interests that it is ready to end the stalemate over the opening of the Suez Canal and begin clearing operations if it is given a guarantee that these will not be hampered by the Israelis, the “New York Times” News Service reports. But Egyptian officials are not happy about the prospects of clearing the 103-mile-long waterway because, they contend, the United States and other maritime powers appear unlikely to put pressure on Israel to this end. With such an outlook, the Government has postponed a decision about deepening the canal, which has been blocked

by sunken ships since the Middle East war of last June. But it has announced that it will study the possibility of laying a giant oil pipeline alongside the canal as “a supplement.” Ten months after the sixday Arab-Israeli war, the canal’s future remains the largest “unknown quantity” in the Government’s economic planning. The canal is crucial because its tolls brought in so much in foreign exchange. For the time being, grants from the oil-rich Governments of Kuwait, Libya and Saudi Arabia are making up the loss. Beyond simply clearing the canal to the point where the 15 trapped foreign vessels could be freed, the prospect of reopening the waterway remains remote. Although it is a key route for tankers carrying oil from the Middle East to Europe, the United Nations representative (Mr Gunnar Jarring) has made no progress towards persuading Israel and the United Arab Republic to agree on conditions to reopen it. The construction of supertankers capable of carrying oil cheaply from the Arabian peninsula around Africa to

Europe threatens to make the canal obsolete. Conscious of this threat, the Egyptian authorities have recently stressed their readiness to clear the canal enough to permit the 15 stranded vessels to depart—if Israeli assurances are forthcoming that clearance operations would not be obstructed. Israeli troops deployed on the canal bank fired on a Suez Canal Authority vessel last winter as it steamed northwards from Ismailia on a survey mission. The Israelis said the Egyptians had violated an agreement that clearance surveys must be limited to the canal’s southern sector; while the Egyptians contended that they had made no such commitment. Now Egyptian experts say that releasing the trapped vessels should be a relatively simple matter, because there are only three major sunken obstacles. As to reopening the canal to international traffic, the Egyptian Government’s position remains that this can be done only after Israel withdraws her troops from the entire Sinai Peninsula, occu pied last June.