White House Shifts Stance, Labels Attack ‘Deplorable’ : But Defends Israeli Raid as Understandable

The Reagan Administration, which on Tuesday called Israel’s bombing of PLO headquarters in Tunisia a “legitimate response” to terrorism, today backed off that assessment and said the raid was “understandable” but “deplorable.”

“While the resort to violence is deplorable, it is useful to recall the antecedents,” White House spokesman Larry Speakes told reporters, saying the Palestine Liberation Organization had repeatedly infiltrated terrorists into Israel and had been implicated in the Yom Kippur murder of three Israeli civilians in Cyprus.

“The air strike against this background is understandable as an expression of self-defense,” Speakes said.

Pattern of Violence

“Our distress is especially acute, however, since one act of violence touches off another and a pattern of escalation is established. Such acts of violence are contrary to our overall objective of a peaceful, stable Middle East and cannot be condoned.”

Speakes said his statements did not represent any change in policy from Tuesday. However, his words today were considerably more pointed than his original response, which was widely interpreted as condoning the Israeli attack.

The refined statement seemed to move the White House closer to the position taken by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who criticized the raid Tuesday in a speech to the foreign ministers of six Persian Gulf countries at the United Nations.

Views in Conflict

“We need to be clear in our opposition to the acts of violence from whatever quarter they come, and without respect to what is the presumed rationale for them,” Shultz said.

But President Reagan, in remarks to reporters at the White House Tuesday, took a different view. He said nations have the right to retaliate against terrorist attacks “as long as they pick out the people responsible.”

In Tunisia today, President Habib Bourguiba condemned the United States for its “negative and unexpected” support of the Israeli air raid on his territory that left at least 56 people dead.

Israeli officials, brushing off objections to the raid from several countries, pointed to the same U.S. support and insisted world opinion endorsed the retaliatory attack.

‘No Price to Pay’

Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, in New York for the U.N. General Assembly session, said most nations approved of the raid and there would be “no political price to pay.”

Bourguiba, after an emergency morning meeting with U.S. Ambassador Peter Sebastien, issued a statement asking the United States to urgently reconsider its position on the raid.

“The president expressed his worry . . . over the role played by the United States in the operation by the Israeli air force,” a Tunisian statement said.

Government sources said the U.S. 6th Fleet, permanently stationed in the Mediterranean Sea, was undoubtedly aware of the coming air raid but decided not to inform Tunisian officials. They said U.S.-Tunisian relations, normally excellent, could suffer dramatically because of the incident.

Several demonstrations against U.S. policy broke out in the Tunisian capital. Groups of dozens of Palestinian and Tunisian youths, chanting “Israeli assassins” and “No to America,” gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy and other locations.