U.S. Warns Israel Not to Retaliate : Restraint Over 2 Airport Attacks Called Important to Peace Process

The White House attempted Saturday to wave Israel off its pledge of retaliation for terrorist killings in the Rome and Vienna airports, warning against “an escalation of violence on either side” that might further sidetrack the search for a Mideast peace settlement.

Speaking to reporters in Los Angeles, where President Reagan was vacationing, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said the White House sent messages to “a number of nations” urging restraint in the wake of the attacks, which have left five Americans and 13 others dead, including four of the terrorists.

“It is absolutely essential that we continue the peace process. Now more than ever, it’s important,” Speakes said. “What we have asked is that there be restraint on the part of all parties in the region.”

‘Lean Heavily on Israel’

Speakes would not say whether Israel was among the nations that received the messages. A senior official said later, however, that the Administration has asked several friendly nations in the region “to lean heavily on Israel not to retaliate” for the attacks.

That official called it “highly unlikely” that the United States would take quick military action in response to the killings, as it did when the hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro tried to flee Egypt in an EgyptAir jetliner last summer.

President Reagan is reviewing written intelligence reports on the Rome and Vienna airport massacres, Speakes said, but the United States has been unable so far to identify those “specifically” responsible.

In Washington, State Department experts were reported to believe that the killings were plotted by a Libya-based radical Palestinian, Abu Nidal, who is said to be also supported by Syria. He is believed responsible for the 1982 attempted assassination of Israel’s ambassador to Britain and the Nov. 23 hijacking to Malta of an EgyptAir passenger jet, in the aftermath of which 60 people died.

The Israeli government so far has blamed only unnamed Palestinian terrorists for the massacres at El Al airline check-in counters in the Rome and Vienna airport terminals and promised that they “would not go unpunished.”

Israeli Targets

After past terrorist acts, Israel often has targeted outposts of the Palestinian Liberation Organization for retribution, even when blame has been found to lie with other groups.

The 1982 assassination attempt triggered Israel’s controversial invasion of Lebanon and its drive to rid that country of PLO strongholds.

More recently, Israel bombed the PLO’s Tunis headquarters last Oct. 1, with a heavy loss of civilian life, after pro-Palestinian terrorists killed three Israeli tourists aboard a yacht in Cyprus six days earlier.

Friday’s automatic-weapon and grenade strikes injured 121 people and unleashed new fears of terrorism throughout Europe. On Saturday, El Al passengers at Paris’s Orly Airport boarded flights under extraordinary security that included bus trips to Israeli airline jets parked on remote slabs of airport tarmac.

Speakes’ remarks, with other statements by State Department officials in Washington, underlined White House concern that strict Israeli retribution could halt recent moves toward moderation by a few veteran enemies of Israel, including Jordan.

Israel Urged to ‘Think Hard’

On Friday, Israel was publicly counseled to “think real hard” before striking back by Richard W. Murphy, assistant secretary of state for Mideast affairs, who spoke on the ABC-TV news program “Nightline.”

A State Department official, speaking on the promise of anonymity, said Saturday that Israel would undoubtedly seek revenge despite such warnings. The Administration hopes, however, that it will not take politically devastating steps against Palestinians to punish what is probably the act of a tiny splinter group, he said.

The meaning of calls for restraint “is fairly obvious,” that official said. “It means, ‘Don’t bomb downtown Amman,’ ” the Jordanian capital.

Jordan, home to the largest Palestinian population in the Mideast, is viewed as a key nation in any Israeli-Arab peace plan. The country remains in a technical state of war with Israel, but Jordan’s King Hussein this fall expressed new willingness to negotiate an end to that status and join Egypt as a backer of the Mideast peace process.

Speakes declined Saturday to say whether the “extreme tension” generated by Friday’s killings has thwarted hopes for new movement in the long-stalled search for an accord.

Need for Peace Process

“It is always difficult to assess that,” he said, “but this underscores the need to pursue the peace process with increased vigor.”

Reagan expressed the same plea in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, released Saturday in Jerusalem. The letter called the airport murders “another example of the evil of terrorism that we must all work to eliminate,” and said that their perpetrators must be “brought to justice.”

The note added, however, that nations “must not allow terrorists to deter us from pursuing our larger goal of a lasting peace” in the Middle East. State Department officials in Washington were said Saturday to lack precise identification of those involved in the Friday killings, but one official said the acts bore the signature of Abu Nidal.

Abu Nidal, whose real name is Sabri Banna, heads a radical faction that believes Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat is too moderate.

Banna was expelled from Arafat’s Fatah organization in 1973, and a PLO “court” later sentenced him to death in absentia.

Opposes PLO Position

His faction, which now calls itself the Revolutionary Council of Fatah, opposes the PLO’s stated position that guerrilla acts against the Israelis may be undertaken only in Israel or its occupied territories. Abu Nidal’s terrorist acts have been committed in Europe.

U.S. experts believe the airport massacres are Abu Nidal’s work “because of their method of operation,” said a State Department official. “It was designed for maximum destruction; it was targeted against civilians.

“It has to be somebody who is hostile to Arafat, because they chose the two European countries (Italy and Austria) that Arafat has done the most to win over to his side.”

The official also said the timing of the airport attacks “was clearly intended to screw up the peace process,” a goal shared by Abu Nidal and his Libyan hosts.

Michael Wines reported from Los Angeles and Doyle McManus from Washington.