PLO-Jordan Talks End in Discord : Arafat Quietly Leaves Amman; Hussein Reported Furious

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has quietly slipped out of Amman after two weeks of talks with Jordan’s King Hussein, signaling the apparent collapse of their efforts to revive the moribund Middle East peace process.

Palestinian officials said Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, left the Jordanian capital Friday night without issuing a statement on the negotiations. He reportedly traveled to Hungary, though the reason for the visit was not known.

The Jordanian government had no comment on Arafat’s departure, though government officials have said privately that King Hussein is furious about the PLO leader’s refusal to make further compromises in order to keep the peace process moving.

“The peace process is over,” lamented one Jordanian official.

‘Window of Opportunity’

U.S. and Jordanian officials have repeatedly spoken of a vanishing “window of opportunity” in which progress in the talks could be expected. They noted, for example, that Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres has appeared more flexible in his recent public statements, but Peres is running out of time because he must turn over the national unity government to the right-wing Likud Party headed by Yitzhak Shamir, the current foreign minister, in October.

Hussein and Arafat signed an agreement last Feb. 11 to pursue a joint peace initiative, advocating an international peace conference to settle the Arab-Israeli dispute and calling for the creation of a Palestinian state in confederation with Jordan.

In recent weeks, the United States has dropped its objections to the holding of an international conference with Soviet participation and agreed to limited PLO participation in the talks.

But the Reagan Administration adheres to a doctrine laid down a decade ago by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger that the United States would not talk with the PLO until the group publicly accepts U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which implicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Arafat has for years refused to accept the two resolutions because they refer to Palestinians only in terms of refugees. The PLO has said it would accept the resolutions in return for U.S. recognition of Palestinian “self-determination,” a term which has been interpreted as meaning an independent state and which successive U.S. administrations have rejected.

“The peace process ended when Arafat left Amman,” said one diplomat. “The King repeatedly told him that a failure to say ‘yes’ on 242 would be interpreted as a ‘no.’ ”

Nonetheless, Palestinian officials attempted to put a brave face on the apparent collapse of the talks, describing it as the end of “the first round of negotiations,” and clearly expecting a “second round.”

Diplomatic Ballet

The talks took on the overtones of a delicate diplomatic ballet, with a special U.S. envoy, Wat T. Cluverius IV, conferring with the Jordanians, who then conferred with the Palestinians and reported back to the Americans. Cluverius was even staying in the same hotel as Saleh Khalaf, the deputy leader of Arafat’s mainline PLO faction Fatah, and had to go out of his way to avoid meeting Khalaf, also known as Abu Iyad, in the halls.

Arafat met with Hussein half a dozen times during his visit, and discussed various statements which the PLO considered making in an effort to satisfy the American conditions. As recently as Wednesday night, Arafat submitted three proposed statements to Hussein, who rejected them as inadequate.

One of the three statements, which had been suggested by a delegation of West Bank leaders, was similar in wording to a statement made by Hussein at the White House last May and had been considered acceptable to the Reagan Administration. But Arafat apparently amended the statement at the last minute and rendered it unacceptable.

One of the ironies of the apparent collapse of the talks was that the positions of the various sides had narrowed significantly in recent weeks.

PLO leaders noted, for example, that the U.S. acceptance of an international conference and PLO participation was a significant breakthrough.

But they said that the American notion of a conference as a mediating forum, rather than having powers of binding arbitration, was still unacceptable to the PLO.

In an effort to make acceptance more palatable to the PLO, the United States said it would accept a statement from Arafat that spoke of self-determination, as long as it was not put as a condition for PLO acceptance of the the U.N. resolutions.

In addition to Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Reagan Administration agreed to drop its demand that the PLO explicitly accept Israel’s right to exist. Instead, it said it would agree to a “nuance change” that said, in effect, that the PLO would negotiate with Israel in the context of an international conference.

Unacceptable to Arafat

It also required the PLO to announce an end to the so-called “armed struggle” during negotiations with Israel, a point Arafat also found unacceptable. Last November in Cairo, Arafat pledged to suspend all PLO military operations outside of Israel and not to attack civilians inside the Jewish state. However, Arafat’s pledge was ambiguous in that it did not include a rejection of “armed struggle” inside Israel.

Arafat’s departure for Eastern Europe was also considered significant because U.S. and Jordanian officials believe he came under severe pressure from the Soviet Union to resist accepting Resolutions 242 and 338.

The Soviets have called repeatedly for reconciliation between Arafat’s Fatah guerrilla group and dissident wings of the PLO that are based in Syria, the main Soviet ally in the Middle East.