Hussein Links PLO, Islam, Communists

King Hussein said Tuesday that a “strange, rather unholy holy alliance” has developed in Jordan among Muslim fundamentalists, Communists and officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Hussein accused the PLO of providing covert financial aid to a fundamentalist candidate in a recent parliamentary by-election and said the PLO also had a role in student unrest in May in which three people died.

Speaking to reporters at an unusual luncheon meeting at Nedwa Palace, the king indicated that this PLO activity was the reason that his government last week closed down the offices here of Fatah, the mainstream PLO group headed by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The king also said:

--He will visit Iraq within the next few days, and Syria soon, in an effort to revive an attempt at reconciliation between the two countries. Last month, Hussein arranged a meeting between the Iraqi and Syrian foreign ministers, but at the last minute it collapsed.

--Jordan feels that the United States is ignoring “the Palestinian dimension” in rejecting a Soviet proposal that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council meet as a prelude to an international peace conference. Hussein said the United States rejected the idea because the Soviets have no diplomatic relations with Israel, but he noted that the Soviets recognize the PLO and that the United States does not.

--He must have a Palestinian partner before entering negotiations for a peace settlement because Jordan is unwilling to tackle such a project by itself.

In a related Middle East development, Thomas R. Pickering, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, arrived Tuesday in Amman for an unusual visit with government officials. Israel radio reported that Pickering was briefed before the trip by officials in the office of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

U.S. officials in Amman characterized Pickering’s visit as private. They said that although he will meet the king and other Jordanian officials, whom he met while serving as a diplomat in Amman, Pickering did not bring any message from the Israelis to the Jordanians.

No New Peace Plan

Hussein confirmed at the luncheon that no new peace initiative appears to be imminent.

“Right now,” he said, “we’re trying to see what can be done to make sure the situation doesn’t deteriorate any more.”

Jordan has imposed a number of security measures since Feb. 19, when the king broke off political coordination with the PLO. Last week, Jordan not only closed Fatah’s offices but expelled Khalil Wazir, the deputy PLO military commander.

Security matters are considered particularly sensitive here, and the king’s allegations about an alliance among fundamentalists, Communists and the PLO went considerably beyond a government statement saying the Fatah offices were closed because of PLO criticism of Hussein’s West Bank policies.

The Jordanians have been particularly concerned about PLO interference in Jordan since 1970, when Jordanian troops fought with Palestinian guerrillas and expelled them from the country. The PLO has never been allowed to resume an armed presence in Jordan.

University Protest

Recent internal strains include demonstrations at Yarmouk University in the northern city of Irbid, in May, in which three students died when Bedouin troops entered university buildings to clear protesting students. The king called the events a “surprise and a shock.”

He said the PLO was involved in the Yarmouk unrest, but he did not elaborate. After the clashes, a dozen officials of the outlawed Communist Party were jailed, the president of the university resigned and 21 faculty members and administrators, more than half of them fundamentalists and leftists, were dismissed.

Hussein also said the PLO gave an unspecified amount of money to Abdul-Magid Nuseir, a fundamentalist candidate in Irbid who was supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, in a parliamentary by-election on June 19. Nuseir, a mathematician at Yarmouk until his dismissal last December, finished second in the election and alleged that there had been interference by the security police to intimidate the voters.

Nuseir said Tuesday in a telephone interview that he had heard official allegations that Wazir, Arafat’s deputy, gave him $20,000, but he denied getting any PLO support. “The king is misinformed and misled,” Nuseir said.

The king did not spell out what role might have been played by Wazir, but a Jordanian official said the government has evidence that he made payments to Palestinian journalists in the West Bank area.

Talking about the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Hussein indicated that the brotherhood, a group of fundamentalists, is still active.

“We have been watching recent developments, not entirely with satisfaction,” Hussein said of the group. “There may be small elements responsible for some of these tensions we have lived through.”

The Muslim Brotherhood was officially tolerated in Jordan until last year, when the king accused the group of sponsoring violent acts against Syria. The king said that until last fall, he was unaware of the group’s campaign against the regime in Damascus, “as strange as that might sound in a small country like Jordan.”