Peace Process May Be Raid Casualty, Diplomats Fear

Arab and Western diplomats said Wednesday that the real casualty of the Israeli raid on the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Tunis headquarters may have been the peace process, which they predicted will be set back by at least several months.

Privately, Egyptian officials also expressed dismay at the Reagan Administration’s support for the raid, which one Foreign Ministry source said will probably have a “negative impact” on relations between Cairo and Washington.

However, diplomats and other officials appeared to disagree over the extent of the setback. Several noted that Egypt, Jordan and PLO leader Yasser Arafat--the three parties involved in current peace efforts on the Arab side--have all affirmed that they will continue to pursue a peace initiative that they launched last February.

A ‘Heinous Crime’

Egypt denounced the attack as a “heinous crime” and suspended talks with Israel over a border dispute that were to have resumed this week. However, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, warning against “convulsive” reactions, also affirmed his commitment to the peace process.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman added that, while his country regarded the attack as an attempt by Israel to “sabotage current peace efforts,” Cairo will “stick by those efforts whatever the price.”

Arafat, who escaped injury in the air attack while his Tunis headquarters was destroyed, warned that the PLO will “respond to this official terrorism and to the Israeli military junta.” But he also indicated that he will not back out of an agreement that he reached with Hussein last February to seek peace talks with Israel through the mediation of the United States.

‘Extremely Critical Period’

“We are in an extremely critical and important period,” Arafat said in Tunis. “We must do everything we can to stop this violence.”

Israel said it staged the raid in retaliation for a mounting wave of terrorist attacks culminating in the slaying of three Israelis aboard a yacht docked in Larnaca, Cyprus, on Sept. 25. Israeli officials said the three terrorists who carried out the attack were members of Force 17, an Arafat-controlled group that functions as the PLO’s equivalent of a secret service.

The PLO has disclaimed responsibility for the attack, and Egyptian and Jordanian officials have suggested that it was the work of a Syrian-controlled group bent on discrediting Arafat and sabotaging the peace process.

Despite Egyptian and Jordanian pledges not to abandon that process, diplomats and other officials said they believed that efforts to initiate a dialogue between the United States and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation had been set back, if not destroyed.

Peace Process in Jeopardy

“It puts the peace process into serious jeopardy just when there seemed to be some movement,” said a Western diplomat.

Egyptian officials charged that the attack was timed to embarrass Jordan’s King Hussein, who is in Washington seeking congressional support for U.S. arms sales to Jordan. Israeli officials denied that the attack was purposely timed to undercut Hussein’s visit, but several Western diplomats and Egyptian Foreign Ministry officials said it had that effect all the same.

“The attack itself was bad enough, but the timing was worse,” said one Egyptian official.

Privately, Egyptian officials also expressed anger and dismay over the Reagan Administration’s initial description of the Israeli raid as a “legitimate response and an expression of self-defense” against terrorist attacks.

“Our initial reaction was meant to condemn the attack without letting it sabotage the peace process, but the Reagan Administration’s statements have complicated matters,” said one Foreign Ministry source.

‘Cooling of Relations’

The Administration’s response “was deeply embarrassing to both Hussein and Mubarak. I now think there will have to be some cooling of relations with the United States,” the source added.

“If the Reagan statement had been even mildly critical, we might have been able to be more optimistic,” another official said. However, he said, U.S. support for the attack “makes it very difficult” for Egypt to try to convince other Arab states that the United States is still the best broker of an Arab-Israeli peace.

“Now we will have to reassess our position, and this will mean that we will have a stalemate for at least several months,” the official said.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, reaction to the attack was predictably harsh.

Syria, which opposes Hussein’s peace initiative, said the raid “reiterates the need for military preparations to confront the Israeli enemy.”

Kuwait described the attack as a “barbaric and terrorist act,” and Saudi Arabia called upon the U.N. Security Council to slap sanctions on Israel for its “treacherous aggression.”

Egypt’s semiofficial press portrayed the attack as an attempt to undercut peace efforts, and one Kuwaiti newspaper, Al Khaleej, urged pro-American states in the region to “stop wasting the Arab nations’ time in talking peace with the United States.”