Syria Not Cited in Camp Attacks : Arab League Moderates Fail to OK Jordan-PLO Plan for Mideast Peace

Moderate members of the Arab League ended an emergency summit meeting Friday without giving Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization a clear endorsement of their joint plan for peace with Israel.

Paralyzed by the differences it was called together to solve, the summit also dampened PLO hopes by failing to condemn Syria for recent attacks by Shia Muslim militiamen on Palestinians in Beirut’s Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps.

On only one issue--the five-year-old war between Iraq and non-Arab Iran--did the summit take an unequivocal stand by denouncing Iran for its “insistence on continuing the war.”

Perhaps even more damaging for the frail sense of unity that they sought to preserve, the 16 conference participants also were unable to agree on a date for the next regular Arab League summit, which is already two years overdue. Jordan, Morocco and Iraq pressed the other participants to set a date for the next meeting, with Moroccan Foreign Minister Abdellatif Filali even suggesting that failure to do so might mean the end of the 40-year-old Arab League.

Unanimity Sought

But conference sources said that Saudi Arabia, which is scheduled to host the next summit, refused to set a date for the meeting until all 21 league members agree to attend it.

This summit, called by King Hassan II of Morocco to discuss Arab differences and the “Palestinian question in all its aspects,” was boycotted by five hard-line states--Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Algeria and South Yemen.

But it was their influence--especially Syria’s--that dominated the three-day meeting. “The radicals will feel they achieved something here because the summit was not able to take decisions in their absence,” said Youssef Alawi, the foreign minister of Oman.

Nevertheless, participants said that the conference was important because, with the radicals absent, the moderates were able to achieve a private consensus approving the Feb. 11 Jordanian-PLO accord, which calls for preliminary talks with the United States followed by negotiations with Israel and an international peace conference.

“In the private consultations, most of the countries have been supportive of the Feb. 11 accord,” Alawi said.

What is said in resolutions “is not so important,” added Sheik Mohammed ibn Mubarak al Khalifa, the foreign minister of Bahrain. “Just look at the resolutions of the United Nations. To have an understanding is much more important than having a resolution, and we have an understanding.”

Closeted Consensus

However, fearful of angering the Syrians, the moderates never let this consensus out of the closet. Contrary to earlier expectations, no resolutions were issued, and the final communique failed to endorse the Amman proposal despite an emotional appeal for support by Jordan’s King Hussein.

Speaking during a closed session of the summit Wednesday, Hussein described the Feb. 11 proposal as “the last feasible chance” for peace and warned that failure to support it would “take us back to a state of inaction and paralysis.”

The final communique, however, merely said that the Jordan-PLO proposal was explained here “in detail” by Hussein and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and added that the summit “noted with appreciation their explanations of the harmony between the Jordanian-Palestinian plan of action and the Fez plan.”

The Fez plan, adopted in the Moroccan city at the last Arab League summit three years ago, called for creation of an independent Palestinian state and for Israeli withdrawal from all territories occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War and thereafter in return for recognition of the right “of all states in the region to live in peace.”

Without mentioning Syria or the Shia Muslim militias by name, the communique merely noted “the suffering of the Palestinian camps after the Israeli invasion (of Lebanon) in 1982 and the massacres and butchery that followed.”

It called upon the government of Lebanon and the PLO to “reinforce their brotherly relations” through dialogue “with the view of preventing further threats to the Palestinians’ existence in those camps.”

The language fell far short of Arafat’s emotional appeal to summit participants to answer “the cries of dying women and children in Sabra and Chatilla.” However, the Palestinians tried to put on a good face, saying that the very fact the meeting was held over Syrian objections was itself a victory for their cause.

Diplomatic sources said that the Saudis vetoed stronger language, arguing that it was important to “keep the door open” to Syria by not isolating it further. This, in turn, provoked a sharp exchange of words between Arafat and Crown Prince Abdullah, head of the Saudi delegation, on Thursday night, the sources said.

Summit participants did agree--in the only concrete action they were able to take--to form two fence-mending committees to visit the boycotting states. One committee, composed of Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, will try to mediate differences between Syria on one hand and Jordan and Iraq on the other. The other committee, composed of representatives from Morocco, Mauritania and the United Arab Emirates, will seek to settle Libya’s differences with Iraq and the PLO.

However, many participants said they think that Arab differences are now too deep to bridge, and some--Oman’s Alawi among them--questioned whether the divided Arab League can continue to exist in the face of the hard-line nations’ rejectionist stance and the moderates’ paralysis.