Oust PLO as Negotiators, Thatcher Says

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said today that if the Palestine Liberation Organization does not renounce terrorism and recognize Israel, another negotiating representative for the Palestinian people must be found.

Sources said, however, that Palestinian leaders in the Israeli-occupied territories have already spurned such a suggestion as “misplaced.”

“Some kind of election process might be the way in which to be sure those people (negotiators) have the support of the Palestinians behind them,” Thatcher told a news conference, winding up a historic three-day visit to Israel.

Her visit was the first by a British prime minister since modern Israel was founded in 1948 in the former British mandate of Palestine.

The news conference was held in the King David Hotel, which former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begins’s Irgun guerrilla group blew up in 1946 during the last days of the British mandate, killing or wounding 200.

‘Tried Every Way I Could’

“I tried in every way I could to persuade the . . . PLO to renounce terrorism and to accept (U.N. Security Council Resolution) 242 (on) Israel’s right to exist, as a condition of our negotiating with them,” Thatcher said.

“If they were prepared genuinely to do that, then it seemed to me there is a new situation . . . (which) would make it possible to view the PLO in a different light.”

“If we cannot do that,” she said, “we have to find other Palestinian representatives who truly represent the Palestinian people. There is not yet a solution.”

Thatcher met Monday night with eight Palestinian leaders from the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians presented her with a petition asking for self-determination for the Palestinian people and condemnation of the April U.S. air raid on Libya, sources said. Thatcher supported the raid by allowing U.S. warplanes based in Britain to participate.

Hussein-Arafat Talks

The Palestinians also asked Thatcher to urge Jordan’s King Hussein to renew talks with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in an effort to resume the peace process, the sources said. They also said talk about an alternative moderate Palestinian leadership is misplaced, the sources said.

Thatcher told reporters that the eight Palestinians “were very clear they rejected terrorism as a way of solving any problem and were quite clear about that.” She also said they did not discuss Resolution 242 specifically, but “I would not say they would reject 242 in any way.”

Thatcher said, however, that she was not carrying any proposals from Prime Minister Shimon Peres to Hussein, whom she will meet in three weeks.

Thatcher said that Britain believes in the right of Palestinians to self-determination and that a confederation with Jordan, proposed by the United States, “is the most likely (proposal) to achieve success.”