Italy Says Abbas Was Freed Under Diplomatic Status

Italian officials could not have arrested Palestinian leader Abul Abbas, who escaped an American arrest warrant here for complicity in the hijacking of the cruise liner Achille Lauro, because he was protected by diplomatic immunity, Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi insisted Monday.

In any case, Craxi added, when the United States asked for the arrest of Abbas, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Council, it did not offer sufficient proof to give Italy legal grounds to hold him.

Meanwhile, the four hijackers were moved to an undisclosed maximum security prison from the jail in Syracuse, Sicily, originally a 17th-Century convent, where they had been held since Saturday. Also, investigating magistrates said that more people than the four young Palestinians being held were involved in the hijacking.

Prosecutors in Genoa issued a formal arrest warrant for one additional suspect, a 21-year-old Palestinian who was picked up before the Achille Lauro sailed when he left an incoming ship from Tunis carrying two false passports. The magistrates charged the man, identified as Khalaf Mohammed Zainab, with conspiracy to hijack a ship and kidnaping, according to Italian news agency accounts.

Unconfirmed reports from Genoa said there may have been as many as six other Palestinians involved in the hijacking, but an investigating magistrate involved in the case would say only that “we presume that others were involved, accomplices in Italy, but we don’t know who at this time.”

Craxi, fighting to mend a diplomatic rift with the United States and cool a crisis within his own government over the affair, said that Abbas never left the Egyptian airliner that was forced down in Italy by American jets while attempting to fly the ship’s four hijackers to sanctuary in Tunisia.

Abbas and an aide on the intercepted EgyptAir flight “remained constantly on board the plane, covered by diplomatic immunity and under the control of the Egyptian military” until they boarded a Yugoslav flight from the country, Craxi said. Armed Egyptian security guards were also aboard the aircraft.

“It was a plane on an official (Egyptian) mission, therefore to be considered covered by diplomatic immunity and extraterritorial status as much on land as in the air,” Craxi said in a statement that he read Monday night to a four-hour crisis meeting of his inner Cabinet.

The prime minister added that Abbas, called a “notorious Palestinian terrorist” by the United States, carried an Iraqi diplomatic passport.

Describing a late Friday night visit by U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Rabb asking for Abbas’ provisional arrest, Craxi said that “although formally correct,” the request was not accompanied by evidence that under Italian law “would be considered sufficient proof for such an arrest.”

U.S. Rebuke

The United States rebuked Italy in strong terms for letting Abbas escape Saturday on a Yugoslav airliner to Belgrade and called the handling of the matter “incomprehensible.” Abbas did not participate directly in the takeover of the Achille Lauro but is accused by the United States of having masterminded the operation that resulted in the hijacking.

In addition to the U.S.-Italian diplomatic flare-up, Craxi faces a deep rift in his own governing five-party coalition concerning both the Abbas affair and his relations with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

Although his account of the critical events leading up to Abbas’ flight from Rome appeared to satisfy some of his coalition partners, Craxi’s principal critic, Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini, boycotted the emergency Cabinet meeting and said that his small but influential Republican Party disassociated itself from the government’s handling of the affair.

In defending his handling of the hijacking, Craxi also denied press reports in the United States of tension between American and Italian troops who surrounded the intercepted EgyptAir plane when it was forced to land at the U.S.-Italian naval air base at Sigonella, Sicily, early Friday morning. He also disclosed for the first time that American troops arrived on transport aircraft with the intercepted Egyptian jet.

He said that about 50 American soldiers disembarked from one of two C-141 transports that came in with the Egyptian airliner and surrounded it, as did about 50 Italian troops.

Talk With Reagan

Meanwhile, he said, he held a lengthy telephone conversation with President Reagan, and when it was completed the American troops returned to their plane. “There was no tension between American soldiers and Italian soldiers,” Craxi said.

Earlier, Craxi said, at about the time Italian radar picked up the approaching planes, he had his first conversation with Reagan. That, presumably, was when the American President asked for Italian cooperation in bringing the Egyptian plane down.

According to Craxi, the EgyptAir flight was first denied permission to come in to the Sicilian base but then was cleared to land “because of the situation of emergency declared by the pilot.”

When the question of the fate of the hijackers and the two PLO officials accompanying them arose in his second conversation with Reagan, Craxi said, he “refused his (Reagan’s) request to transfer the four hijackers and the two (other) Palestinians to the United States and communicated to him the intention to bring the hijackers to trial and acquire useful elements on the affair from the two Palestinian officials.”

Even though Craxi said that the two PLO officials never left the airliner from the time of its landing early Friday until they boarded the Yugoslav plane at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport Saturday evening, the prime minister said in his statement that Italian authorities obtained statements from them about the pirating of the cruise ship and the surrender of its hijackers.

Pressure From Egypt

He also acknowledged receiving pressure from the Egyptian government during the affair demanding the return of the plane and all of its passengers except for the four accused hijackers.

The government crisis over Abbas’ escape from the U.S. extradition request was triggered by Spadolini, who had sharply criticized Craxi and Giulio Andreotti, the Christian Democratic foreign minister, throughout the course of the hijacking for calling on Arafat to help them arrange the surrender of the pirates.

The conservative defense minister was angered when his partners in the government coalition failed to consult him or leaders of the other two minority parties in the coalition before arranging for Abbas’ hasty departure from Rome.

“I learned on television of the escape of Abul Abbas,” Spadolini said Monday after his Republican Party leadership disassociated itself from the Craxi-Andreotti action. He complained that Abbas, “an important witness to the investigation,” had not been interrogated before fleeing Italy.

The Social Democrats, second in strength to the Republicans among the three small parties in the coalition, also announced a “firm disassociation” from the “methods and procedures” followed by Craxi and Andreotti in letting Abbas go. But they did not follow Spadolini’s lead in boycotting the Cabinet meeting.

Brink of Decision

Both the Republicans and Social Democrats appeared earlier to have been teetering on the edge of a decision to withdraw from the coalition government, a move that would bring Craxi down. Although both are small--Spadolini’s Republicans have 29 seats in Parliament and the Social Democrats 23--they would erase the coalition’s 366-seat majority in the 630-member Parliament if they withdrew.

Such an outcome would end what has been one of the most stable periods in post-World War II Italian political history. Craxi gained the prime ministership Aug. 4, 1983, as the only leader acceptable to all members of the five-party coalition. A month from now, if he survives the current crisis, he will eclipse the previous record for postwar government durability, the 833 days served by the late Aldo Moro in 1966-68.