Syria Blasts Morocco and Severs Ties

Syria today accused Morocco of “black treason” and urged all Arab nations to cut ties with it as King Hassan II met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres on Middle East peace.

Morocco’s controlled news media kept silent on the visit by Peres, the first by a serving Israeli prime minister to any Arab nation other than Egypt, with which Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979.

Troops and police ringed the pro-Western monarch’s summer palace in the mountains at Ifrane, 125 miles east of Rabat, and access was barred to outsiders.

Israeli reporters who arrived with Peres on the surprise trip to this North African nation on Monday night were in a luxury hotel within the security belt, apparently unable to communicate with the outside world.

Others Urged to Act

In an official statement from Damascus, Syria announced it severed ties with Morocco and called on other Arab nations to follow suit, as most did when Egypt made its peace with Israel. The only other Arab leader to meet publicly with an Israeli prime minister was the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry summoned Morocco’s ambassador in Damascus and gave him one week to close the Moroccan Embassy and leave the country. Syria also barred its citizens from traveling to Morocco.

Moroccan officials acknowledged privately that the Hassan-Peres talks were in progress. They would say little more, however, and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Leaders Notified

Western diplomats said the meeting was carefully prepared, with “friendly leaders” informed in advance, including President Reagan and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt said of the talks: “If they are going to present us with new initiatives for a solution, I support this with everything in my power and I believe the whole nation agrees with me, because we want to live in peace.”

Moammar Kadafi of Libya, whose country is linked to Hassan’s by a 2-year-old treaty of union, said receiving Peres was a “grave violation” of that agreement but stopped short of breaking formal ties.

Iraq said the meeting was a “deviationist and strange” move by Hassan that would “further weaken and rip apart the fragmented Arab world.”

Jordan, Israel the Crux

The diplomats in Rabat said that the relationship between Jordan and Israel was at the heart of the Peres-Hassan talks.

An attempt to arrange peace negotiations between the two countries, with the United States acting as broker, has stagnated since an agreement on a joint approach by Jordan’s King Hussein and Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat fell apart in February.