Suez: bid to ban warships

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33519, 27 April 1974, Page 15

Suez: bid to ban warships

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, April 26. A United States senator intends to introduce an amendment seeking to prohibit American support for the re-opening of the Suez Canal unless Egypt agrees to ban all foreign warships from the waterway for at least five years. Senator Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina) will propose the amendment when the Senate begins its debate on the Government’s Foreign Aid Bill, which includes SUS2SOm for Egypt, SUS2Om of which is to help to finance the re-opening >f the canal.

Senator Helms says that tht ban will apply to both American and Soviet Union ships, but he makes it clear that his amendment is designed to prevent the Soviet Union from using the reopened waterway to gain better access to the Indian Ocean.

Senate observers say that 1 Senator Helms’s proposal is 1 likely to gain considerable support. Senator Henry 1 Jackson (Democrat, Washington), a powerful senator on military matters, told re- ‘ porters yesterday that he was also considering introducing a measure to make the Egyptian aid con-1 ditional on demilitarisation| of the canal.

(Mr Ephraim Katzir) for the official Presidential invitation to form a Government.

He will have three weeks to select a new team and he can ask for another three weeks if unsuccessful. Political observers believe that his chances of forming a viable Government are small and that the caretaker Government headed by Mrs Meir since her resignation earlier this month will have to carry on in office until elections in the autumn. Mr Rabin is expected to try to re-establish the existing coalition, which draws support from the National Religious Party and the Independent Liberals.

Syrian heavy guns yesterday pounded Israeli defence installations and damaged a radar station during daylong tank and artillery clashes, a military spokesman said in Damascus.

He did not specify the Israeli radar station damaged by Syrian artillery but said that three Israeli observation posts, a strongpoint, an ammunition dump and several tanks were also hit. A house was hit when the heavily populated Mount Hermon village of Baaqsim came under Israeli shelling, the spokesman said. The official Syrian Arab News Agency reported that one civilian was killed and three others were wounded in the shelling.

Peace mission The American Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) will take his wife, Nancy, on his fifth Middle East peace mission, which begins on Sunday. Dr Kissinger will travel to Geneva and Algiers before arriving in Cairo on Tuesday to begin efforts to secure a disengagement of Syrian and Israeli forces on the Golan Heights. From Cairo he will fly to Tel Aviv, and then to Damascus, and it is expected that he will shuttle between the Syrian capital and Tel Aviv in his attempt to rejconcile the Syrian and Israeli ■positions.