Syria, Libya Behind Recent Wave of Mediterranean Terror, Arafat Says

Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has accused Syrian and Libyan intelligence agencies of being behind the new wave of terrorism that has swept the Mediterranean area in recent months.

Arafat, in an interview here at week’s end, said the intelligence services of Syria and Libya are sponsoring terrorism to discredit the PLO and to prevent a negotiated settlement with Israel.

Arafat’s comments came against a backdrop of widespread charges that the PLO is responsible for recent terrorist attacks such as the ones at the Rome and Vienna airports last month. They reflected his lack of effective control over all elements of the Palestinian umbrella organization, which has become drastically splintered. Israeli officials, in condemning the terrorist attacks, have blamed the PLO in general, pointing to its long history of terrorism.

Denunciation of Terror

In November, in the wake of the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, Arafat issued a declaration in Cairo denouncing terrorism against unarmed civilians except in Israeli-occupied territories, which PLO officials have defined as all of Israel as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Arafat’s charges against the Syrians and Libyans, the first time he has singled out those two nations by name in such a context, were made despite the obvious consternation of many of his aides, who sought to have the references to the two countries deleted from the interview after Arafat had flown out of Tunisia for another round of talks with other Middle Eastern leaders.

“We don’t want to be collaborators,” said PLO spokesman Ahmed Abdul-Rahman in asking for the deletions. “Why should we help justify Israeli and U.S. attacks on Libya or Syria?”

In a two-hour interview in one of the many PLO safehouses among which he shifts in the wake of last October’s Israeli bombing of his headquarters south of Tunis, Arafat made several other points:

--He believes that only Syrian, not Libyan, intelligence was involved in the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. The PLO still has not been able to establish whether Abul Abbas, a member of the PLO Executive Committee and head of the PLO-associated Palestine Liberation Front, had in fact masterminded the Achille Lauro hijacking, as Italian, U.S. and Israeli authorities charge. Abbas, who has refused to attend PLO meetings, has effectively disappeared, Arafat said.

--Abu Nidal, the Palestinian renegade who broke with Arafat in 1974 and whose followers are believed to have staged the EgyptAir hijacking to Malta in November as well as the Rome and Vienna airport assaults, is a “tool” of the Syrian and Libyan intelligence organizations.

--The refusal of the United States to negotiate with PLO moderates about a compromise peace accord on the Palestinian issue is to blame for the continuing desperation and radicalism among young Palestinians, who are thus easily recruited by these Arab intelligence organizations for terrorism.

--Despite the recent rapprochement between Arafat’s political ally, King Hussein of Jordan, and his longtime enemy, President Hafez Assad of Syria, the joint PLO-Jordanian peace negotiating proposals signed last February are still very much alive.

In talking about the Achille Lauro hijacking, Arafat seemed ill at ease and defensive about the allegations that Abbas, whom he brought into the PLO Executive Committee in 1983 to offset Syrian efforts to split the organization, was the man behind the operation that ended in the death of an elderly, invalid American passenger.

“Till now I do not know the story because till now I did not meet Abul Abbas,” Arafat said, underlining that he did not know Abbas’ whereabouts since the hijacking. For a time, Abbas was in Italian custody, but he was freed despite Washington’s protests. If Abbas is found to have been behind the Achille Lauro affair, as Italian judicial officials have charged, he will be disciplined under PLO laws, Arafat insisted.

In discussing Abu Nidal--whose real name is Sabri Banna and who heads a terrorist group calling itself Revolutionary Council of Fatah, Arafat said, “He is a tool for some Arab intelligence services.

“He is only a front for these Arab services, nothing more,” Arafat said. “Now he is working for the Syrians and the Libyans.”

4 Terrorist Incidents

In discussing the Achille Lauro affair; the hijacking of the EgyptAir jet to Malta, in which 60 people were killed, and the Dec. 27 attacks on the Rome and Vienna airports, in which 19 people were killed and more than 100 wounded, Arafat insisted that these operations were not those of Palestinian organizations even if young Palestinians might have been involved.

“These countries are using Palestinian names, but they are not Palestinian organizations,” Arafat said. “Because of the Palestinian tragedy, it is easy to find individuals--some elements here, some elements there--to use. Especially because more than 60% of our people are in the diaspora, facing daily Israeli oppression, Israeli terrorism, no doubt these intelligence services succeeded in finding one group here, or one group there--individuals here or there--to use.”

Arafat said that such recruitment--and the violence that results from it--will continue as long as there is no change in the political and social conditions of the Palestinians who are advocating the creation of some sort of Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

‘Despair, Hopelessness’

“Those (Arab) intelligence services are exploiting the despair, the hopelessness, the tragic living conditions in which the Palestinians are obliged to exist,” Arafat said. “But once there is an acceptable political solution, the political and human environment that feeds (terrorism) will have changed. It is the absence of any political solution that promotes that kind of military operation.

“These kinds of operations will continue taking place as long as there is no acceptable political solution to the Palestinian problem,” Arafat said, insisting that his organization was not behind the recent spate of hijackings and terrorist attacks but is incapable of preventing all such attacks by others.

Arafat blamed the United States for the current deadlock in the peace process, charging that for every Arab and Palestinian move toward compromise in the past 10 years, there has “been no response” from the Americans, who have urged such moves.

He specifically cited the 1982 Arab summit in Morocco, which produced a 10-point peace proposal initially advanced by Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, and the more recent agreement last Feb. 11 between Arafat and King Hussein for a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation for U.S.-sponsored negotiations with Israel over setting up a self-governing Palestinian “entity” in the West Bank and Gaza in some form of association with Jordan.

Arafat said that despite the deadlock and the lack of any U.S. response to Arab moves toward compromise, he still has hope for the peace process.