BRITAIN WILL NOT IMPLEMENT PALESTINE DECISION ALONE

Evening Star, Issue 26087, 29 April 1947, Page 5

BRITAIN WILL NOT IMPLEMENT PALESTINE DECISION ALONE

NEW YOHK, April 27. Britain was ready to accept any decision reached by the United Nations on the Palestine problem, but did not intend to implement any decision —just or unjuct—alone, said the spokesman of the British United Nations delegation to the special session of the United Nations Assembly. The spokesman pointed out that if the United Nations decided, for example, that Palestine should be partitioned, Britain could not be expected to divide the Holy Land and enforce the decision. Britain naturally would co-opernte with other Powers in carrying out the decision, but would not assume the sole responsibility. If troops should be needed to supervise any action take'll in Palestine, they should be Bussiau, American, and French as well as British, but not British alone. The ‘ Times,’ in an editorial, says that the special session of the United Nations General Assembly, which opens on April 28, was convened at Britain’s request for the specific purpose of enabling the regular session rn September to get to grips with the Palestine question as expeditiously as possible. This can only be achieved if the delegates confine themselves to appointing and the instruction of the committee whose task will be to prepare a comprehensive recomendation for the September meeting. PRESSURE GROUPS. If the delegates allow themselves to be enmeshed in preliminary discussions, either of particular aspects of the main problem, or, worse still, of the merits of Jewish and Arab claims, they will achieve little towards advancing a just decision, yet the pressure that can be put upon them to do either or both is formidable. Already Egypt, with the support of four other Arab States, has requested _ the meeting to add to the agenda an item calling for the termination of the mandate, and a declaration of Palestine's immediate independence. The Jews are struggling hard to offset their initial disadvantage from a lack of a recognised national status, and the Jewish Agency hotly challenged the Arab position, further demanding the right to participate in the proceedings of the Assembly' as representing the Jewish people. The danger which such a discussion holds is the risk that it may evoke incautious, because premature, expression of opinion, and will increase the difficulty of appointing a committee not only impartial in fact, but generally accepted as impartial. The committee’s membership should be confined to nations having no direct interest either in the issues involved or in the. regional security of the Middle East. Such a proviso would automatically exclude the Big Four.