Might Expel Abbas, PLO Official Says

A high-ranking official of the Palestine Liberation Organization on Sunday condemned the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro as an act of terrorism and a violation of international law and said that the PLO may expel Abul Abbas from its executive committee if it finds that he was behind the incident.

Shafik Hout, the group’s permanent representative to Lebanon, said he does not know the whereabouts of Abbas, whom the United States accuses of masterminding the operation that resulted in the Oct. 7 hijacking and the killing of an elderly American passenger by four Palestinian terrorists.

Abbas, leader of a PLO faction called the Palestinian Liberation Front, claimed to have mediated the surrender of the terrorists. He later said they had not boarded the ship with the intention of hijacking it but of traveling on it to the Israeli port of Ashdod “to carry out an operation in occupied territory.”

U.S. and Israeli officials say they have proof that, whatever the operation, it was organized and directed by Abbas, who accompanied the terrorists aboard an Egyptian airliner that was intercepted over the Mediterranean by U.S. warplanes and forced to land in Sicily. Abbas was allowed to leave Italy over U.S. objections.

Hout, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said that “as a member of our (PLO) parliament . . . (Abbas) should be subject for investigation,” and if it is proved he is tied to the hijacking, “we may dismiss him out of (the) executive committee.”

Speaking from New York where he was also serving as a PLO observer at the United Nations, Hout said the hijacking hurt the Palestinian cause.

“I cannot but condemn it and consider it as an act of terror,” he said.

Before the program, the network announced that it planned to interview PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat by satellite from Tunis. However, Arafat was reported in Kuwait, and Hout was substituted at the last minute.

In another television interview Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said that he might be willing to make concessions on the issue of the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River if Jordan would engage in serious peace negotiations with Israel.

“I’m representing a party which is ready to make territorial compromise,” Peres said on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.” But Peres, interviewed in New York, added that it would be “counterproductive” before negotiations began to go into detail about any such compromise.

Peres ruled out a separate Palestinian state, suggesting that some form of autonomous--but not independent--arrangement, or shared Israeli-Jordanian rule, might be the answer.

The Tel Aviv daily Hadashot on Sunday reported that Peres had presented an autonomy plan to Secretary of State George P. Shultz during his talks in Washington.

On Friday, Peres made a significant concession to King Hussein of Jordan by indicating that, under certain conditions, he might accept Hussein’s proposal for an international conference on the Mideast.