APPEAL TO ARABS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26717, 11 March 1948, Page 7

APPEAL TO ARABS

BOYCOTT TERMINATION PARTITION OF PALESTINE UNITED STATES DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIONS N.Z.P.A.—Copyright Rec. 10 p.m. NEW YORK, Mar. 9. * The United Press says that the United States, acting independently of the other Powers, has secretly extended a diplomatic feeler to the Arab Higher Committee urging it to end its boycott of the partition negotiations. An American spokesman admitted that the United States was trying to arrange consultations between the Arab leaders and the Big Powers. He added that the United States had approached the Arabs in America and in the Middle East but there was no indication of what response the United States received. Meanwhile, private informal Big Four talks are continuing. Britain has declined to take direct part in the talks, but to-day Sir Alexander Cadogan attended by invitation. He did not join in the discussions but merely gave information. The Secretary-general, Mr Trygve Lie, in a surprise move to-day, circulated among Security Council members an opinion of the United Nations legal experts outlining the council’s powers ’to enforce partition. The opinion says: First, the Security Council has no power to alter the terms of the Assembly’s partition l'esolution; secondly, the council is not legally required to take steps to carry out the Assembly decision; thirdly, the council has the right to invoke enforcement measures if the Arabs use force to resist the Palestine Commission’s efforts to set up separate Jewish and Arab States; fourthly, these measures might range from an economic boycott to a collective declaration of war by all the United Nations members. A high Soviet source disclosed to-day that the United States now appears to favour reopening the United Nations plan to partition Palestine. “ Some persons seem to be hesitant about carrying out the Assembly’s decision to partition Palestine,” said a leader of the Soviet oeiegation. “We consider that the partition should be carried out.” Replying to the Soviet charge, the chief American delegate to the United Nations, Mr Warren Austin, said: "The Soviet spokesman has sought to prejudice the issue before the process of the Big Four Power consultations has got under way. The United States is mteresied in the facts anu in a decision upon them at the earliest. We shall judge the issues when consultations are completed.” A message from London says that The Times, reviewing the Palestine situation in. the light of the dilemma in which the Security Council has been placed by the Palestine Commission's report that execution of the partition plan depends upon the provision of some international force to keep peace after the British departure, says the Zionists are now mainly concerned to obtain moral, and, if possible, material support for their determination to create a Jewish State by force. They are angered .by Britain’s refusal to facilitate their preparations, says The Times, but those who criticise the British policy as undermining UNO’s authority would do well to remember that it was not the Assembly’s intention to create a Jewish State without also creatine an Arab State Unless the partition plan can be operated as a whole it will cease to carry UNO's authority. The question now before the Security Council is not whether assistance should be given to the Jewish State but whether and how the partition plan can be put into operation. Clearly neither this nor any other settlement stands the slightest, chance of success unless peace can be preserved in Palestine. Thus the first and most urgent problem facing the Security Council is to find some means of making UNO’s authority effective after the British withdrawal. From Jerusalem it is reported that the Jewish Agency has instructetd its representatives to recommend to the United Nations that the 32-member Jewish Council of Government for the Jewish area of Palestine, which it proposed on March 2, should comprise 14 Left-Wingers one Communist, 10 Labour members, and three members of United Labour which bears to the Left Labour Party—also five General Zionists, which are on the centre line politically, and the remainder from religious groups. The council would include all 12 agency executive members now in Palestine, 14 from the Jewish National Council, and six others.