Shultz Chides Europeans on PLO Issue

Secretary of State George P. Shultz on Tuesday chided Western European nations for endorsing participation by the Palestine Liberation Organization in the Mideast peace process and said the PLO should be barred from negotiations unless it explicitly accepts Israel’s right to exist.

“Unlike some of our European friends, we feel that gestures toward the PLO while it has not accepted (U.N. Security Council resolutions) 242 and 338 only mislead its leaders into thinking their present inadequate policy is gaining them international acceptance and stature,” he said.

“The PLO is not entitled to any payment in advance so long as it rejects what are, after all, the basic premises of the peace process,” he said.

The secretary addressed the Pilgrims of Great Britain, an 83-year-old Anglo-American friendship society, at the start of a nine-day European trip. It combines a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers with stops in Romania and Hungary, his first official visits to nations of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.

En route to London, Shultz said in response to reporters’ questions that he knows of no cases of spying by Israel other than that allegedly undertaken by Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan J. Pollard. He said he believes Israel will cooperate with a U.S. investigation.

A State Department team headed by legal adviser Abraham D. Sofaer is due to arrive in Israel today to meet with Israelis involved in the case.

In response to Western Europeans who have complained that Reagan Administration policy is bellicose, Shultz said in his speech that conflicts in the Middle East, Central America and Africa can be solved by political negotiations only if the United States and its friends demonstrate firmness to “the other side.”

“Diplomacy is unlikely to work unless there is effective resistance” to the Soviets and the radical movements they support, he said.

Conceding that the United States has “tactical differences” with its European allies on the point, Shultz said “the factor of power is inescapable” as part of Western policy in the Third World.

He described as “partly true” the assertion often heard in Europe that the lack of progress toward solving the Arab-Israeli conflict contributes to Arab radicalism.

“But the (Mideast) violence comes from the enemies of peace, from those who would be more angry if the peace process were making rapid progress,” he said. “These extremists must be resisted, not appeased.”

He did not list the radicals, although he left little doubt that the PLO was included.

Talking to reporters aboard the U.S. Air Force jetliner that brought him from Washington, Shultz acknowledged that U.S. efforts to bring Israel and a joint Arab delegation of Jordanians and non-PLO Palestinians to the negotiating table are far behind schedule.

“We certainly had hoped to get them there (to a peace conference) by the end of the year,” he said. “But the issues (of Palestinian representation and international participation) are not resolved. Those have been the sticking points for a while. I think a fair amount of headway has been made on them but we are not there yet. These are difficult issues for everyone.”

In his speech, Shultz said: “In the 1980s and beyond, most likely we will never see a world in a total state of peace or a state of total war. The West is relatively well prepared to deter an all-out war--and we have got to stay that way. . . . But day in and day out, we will continue to see a wide range of conflicts in the gray area between major war and millennial peace.

“What the West should do in these situations varies with the circumstances,” he said. “Sometimes we should give military and economic assistance to neighboring states that are threatened; sometimes we should extend moral or humanitarian or other kinds of support to those resisting.”

Shultz also twitted the Soviet Union for the problems he said it will face in trying to enter the computer age while maintaining a monopoly on information and communication.

“I do not envy Mr. (Mikhail S.) Gorbachev and the challenge he faces in trying to defy the laws of economics and squeeze more productivity out of a system of imposed discipline and bureaucracy,” Shultz said. “He must come to realize that he must loosen up.”