Arafat Warns of Retaliation Against U.S.

Yasser Arafat warned the United States on Saturday that its actions following the Oct. 1, Israeli bombing of the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis and the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro could draw Arab retaliation.

In a lengthy news conference at PLO headquarters here, Arafat accused the United States of involvement in the Tunis raid and said Washington’s goal was to kill him so it could “impose humiliating peace” in the Arab world. The United States has denied involvement.

The PLO leader predicted “a popular hurricane against American interests in the Arab world . . . Fire is under the ashes because of the ugly and dirty American attitude towards the Arabs, and the volcano will explode against the Americans.”

He added: “I am not threatening. I am predicting what will happen. We Arabs are like camels, very patient, but once camels become outraged, no one can control them.”

Arafat said the PLO denounced the ship hijacking and helped Egypt gain the surrender of the four terrorists. The PLO, he said, wanted to “interrogate and try” the men, who were members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a PLO faction.

“The Americans made a big issue of the hijacking to cover up their involvement in the Tunis raid and to accuse us of terrorism in order to launch a new series of Camp David-like accords with some capitalist Arabs without PLO participation,” Arafat continued.

Arafat said he was contacting Arab leaders to reassess the Middle East peace process and his agreement last February with Jordan’s King Hussein for a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation to seek Mideast peace.

“We are planning to revise the peace process concerning the Jordanian-Palestinian agreement, but not the agreement itself,” he said.