Israelis Won’t Include PLO in Shultz Meeting

U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz began talks with Israeli leaders Friday on reviving the Mideast peace process, but Israel ruled out negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization “in any form.”

Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir told reporters after nearly three hours of meeting with Shultz that Israel rejected a reported compromise proposal to include people from the 394-member Palestine National Council, the body the PLO calls its parliament-in-exile, on an Arab negotiating team.

“I told Shultz there will be no negotiation with the PLO in any form,” Shamir said. “I said clearly we will not agree to talk with the PNC. They are a part of the PLO.

“The PNC decides the policies of the PLO. You cannot differentiate between the two,” Shamir said.

Representation Matter

The major stumbling block to restarting the peace process has been disagreement over how to represent the Palestinians. Jordan, supported by Egypt, has insisted that Yasser Arafat’s PLO play a role in any negotiations.

Shamir spokesman Avi Pazner said Shultz had stressed that the United States wanted to encourage direct talks between Israel and its neighbors.

But Pazner said there was no discussion of which Palestinians might be acceptable to Israel.

“We have not reached the stage where we are mentioning names. We are not suggesting names to the Americans,” Pazner said. “We say only that we will accept no person who is a direct or indirect member of the PLO.”

Shamir told reporters that he had brought up the subject of President Reagan’s visit Sunday to the Bitburg military cemetery in West Germany, where 49 Nazi storm troopers are buried.

The Israeli foreign minister said he told Shultz that the Bitburg visit was a “big mistake by a great friend.”

Shamir said Shultz responded that Reagan had “no intention of putting equal importance on the graves of the Nazis and Holocaust victims.”

Before meeting Shamir, Shultz visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the 6 million Jews believed killed in the Holocaust, where he affirmed the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security.

“After the Holocaust, the American people and decent men and women around the world made a solemn pledge: never again. . . .. Today we honor that pledge by standing beside the state of Israel,” Shultz said in a speech at the memorial.

“We honor that pledge when we, with the people of Israel, reach out to help save Ethiopian Jewry. We honor that pledge when we work tirelessly to help Soviet Jewry and other minorities.”

He placed a wreath of red and white flowers at a granite monument to Jewish partisans who fought the Nazis in World War II and dedicated a grove of trees to unknown non-Jews who helped Jews escape the Nazi gas chambers.

“Israel is the true witness to the Holocaust and the truest symbol of the victory of good over evil. That is why Israel must endure and that is why the American people are forever committed to Israel’s security,” Shultz said.

Shultz said the United States had honored its pledge to the Jewish people by pursuing Nazi war criminals, by helping bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel and by working for Soviet Jews “against the Soviet regime’s systematic persecution.”

Six demonstrators stood in the sultry heat outside Yad Vashem to protest Reagan’s visit to Bitburg.

“You cannot balance things by visiting there and here,” said the group’s leader, Gershon Shafat, a Parliament member from the right-wing Tehiya Party.

Shultz did not mention the Bitburg visit in his speech, but Yad Vashem Director Yitzhak Arad made a pointed reference to it, saying, “We believe there can never be reconciliation with the criminal acts of the SS.”

Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who was to meet Shultz on Friday night, also attended the ceremony, along with New York City Mayor Edward Koch.