Commandos Aboard Aircraft : Egyptians Were Ready to Defend Abbas, Craxi Says

Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi said Thursday that Egyptian commandos inside a jetliner carrying the hijackers of the Achille Lauro had threatened armed resistance if Italian authorities tried to remove a Palestinian official from the plane.

Craxi reported that the Egyptian ambassador to Italy said that Abul Abbas, a Palestine Liberation Organization leader accused by the United States of masterminding the hijacking, was “under the protection of the Egyptian government.”

His comments added a new dimension to still-murky accounts of events that led to Abbas’ release from Italy barely a day after U.S. Navy jets forced the EgyptAir 737 carrying the four hijackers, Abbas and another PLO official to land at Sigonella air base in Sicily on Oct. 11.

And they raised further questions about the role Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak played in arranging Abbas’ release from Italy, over heated U.S. objections.

Craxi resigned last week after his five-party ruling coalition government broke up over Abbas’ release. He is now trying to form a new government and was in New York to meet with President Reagan at the United Nations.

Craxi told a crowded news conference at the Italian Cultural Center here that he sent a special assistant to the air base after Reagan telephoned him in the middle of the night to say that the Egyptian plane was headed toward Sicily.

Aboard the jetliner were four Palestinians accused of hijacking the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro and of killing one of its passengers, American tourist Leon Klinghoffer.

Abbas, who heads the Palestine Liberation Front, a PLO faction loyal to Chairman Yasser Arafat, and the other PLO official were escorting the Palestinians from Cairo, where they had surrendered to Egyptian authorities. When Craxi’s aide approached the plane on the tarmac at Sigonella, the prime minister said Thursday, Egypt’s ambassador to Italy told his aide that Abbas was “a Palestinian leader under the protection of the Egyptian government, being kept against his will in our country (Italy).”

Craxi said the Egyptian ambassador, Yehia Rifaat, declared that he would not allow either Italian police officers or Italian judicial officials to enter the plane, and “if we tried we would be repelled by force.”

“There are 10 armed Egyptian soldiers under the command of an officer inside,” Craxi quoted the ambassador as saying.

At the same time, Craxi said, Egyptian President Mubarak was “protesting vigorously” over the detention of the plane.

The Italian prime minister’s remarks also would explain why Abbas, who was flown to Rome after the hijacking suspects were taken from the jetliner, was allowed to spend the night in the Egyptian cultural center there before he slipped out of the country to Yugoslavia.

Reagan Administration sources also told The Times that the United States had intended all along to bypass Italian authorities entirely and bring the hijackers and Abbas directly to the United States for prosecution. The plan went awry when Craxi sent Italian troops to confront American soldiers surrounding the plane.

That confrontation eventually was resolved after a lengthy conversation between Craxi and President Reagan.

In his news conference Thursday, Craxi again defended his decision not to detain Abbas, saying that Italian jurists had deemed evidence submitted by the U.S. Justice Department to be insufficient.