Rival PLO Groups Agree to Reunify : Arafat and Faction Based in Syria Adopt Harder Stance on Peace Talks

Rival factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed Sunday to reunify their divided ranks by adopting a new political platform that considerably hardens the PLO’s stance toward peace talks with Israel.

The agreement, reached on the eve of a meeting of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s “parliament in exile,” formally ends the schism that has split the organization since 1983, when dissident Palestinians broke with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and set up the rival Palestine National Salvation Front in Damascus, Syria.

“Unity has been achieved after years of division,” Arafat deputy Salah Khalaf told reporters. “This is a very happy day for Palestinians everywhere.”

Careful Compromise

True to the PLO’s diverse form, however, the agreement reached after more than a week of difficult negotiations between the leaders of eight guerrilla factions meeting in Algiers in advance of the council was a carefully crafted compromise that appeared to paper over the PLO’s deep divisions as much as mend them, analysts said.

Although not all details of the new understanding were disclosed, Palestinian sources said its main points included the formal abrogation by Arafat of the Amman Accord signed in 1985 with Jordan’s King Hussein, an agreement to broaden and collectivize the leadership of the PLO through a new executive committee to be elected at the forthcoming council meeting and a pledge to abide more strictly by resolutions adopted at previous Arab summit and Palestinian council meetings concerning the PLO’s relations with Egypt.

This last point--PLO-Egyptian relations--was the most difficult and nearly led to a breakdown in the reconciliation talks that dominated the closed-door discussions leading up to the session of the council, which is meeting for the first time since 1984, Palestinian sources said.

The dissidents, led by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had threatened not to attend the council meeting, thereby scuttling the reconciliation talks, unless Arafat agreed to sever the PLO’s ties to Egypt because of the latter’s relations with Israel.

“The negotiations came down to a test of wills between Arafat and (George) Habash,” a senior Palestinian source said, referring to the Popular Front leader. “Arafat came under a lot of pressure, but he resisted. He did not want to break ties with Egypt,” the source added.

Issue Finally Fudged

The compromise that was finally reached appeared to fudge the issue. Under a resolution that will be debated and presumably passed by the rubber-stamp council, the PLO will affirm its rejection of the Camp David Accords and its acceptance of Arab summit resolutions calling for Egypt’s isolation in the Arab world, Palestinian sources said. However, specific steps to implement these resolutions and their timing will be left up to the PLO leadership, the sources added.

“Theoretically, this should mean that we sever relations (with Egypt). But from the mechanical point of view, the details are being left for the leadership to decide later,” a source close to the Popular Front leaders said.

“It was a compromise,” he added. “Habash realized it was as good as he could get.”

But on the question of relations with Jordan, Arafat made a significant concession by agreeing to abrogate the Amman Accord under which he and King Hussein had pledged to formulate a joint strategy for peace talks with Israel and to seek the establishment of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation on the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Accord Cancelled

“The Palestinian-Jordanian Accord has been cancelled,” Khalaf, better known by his nom de guerre of Abu Iyad, announced to reporters.

Nayef Hawatmeh, leader of the Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the third-largest group taking part in the reconciliation talks after Arafat’s own mainline Fatah faction and the Popular Front, told a news conference earlier in the day that the Amman Accord was canceled because it “contradicts the right of our people to an independent state and to independent representation at all international conferences.”

He said the forthcoming council meeting would affirm the PLO’s willingness to take part in peace talks with Israel--but only within the context of an international peace conference “with powers of arbitration” and co-chaired by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, including the Soviet Union.

No to Camp David

“The (council) will say yes to a peace conference, but no to the Camp David Accords, no to the Reagan plan, no to bilateral negotiations . . . and no to any negotiations at which the PLO is not represented independently under its own flag,” he declared.

The PLO’s stiffened stance towards peace talks was likely to be seen as a rebuff to efforts by Egypt and Jordan to muster Western support for the convening of a peace conference later this year.

However, the cancellation of the Amman Accord was in itself not likely to have much of an impact on these efforts because Hussein himself suspended the agreement last year after accusing Arafat of reneging on a pledge to accept U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, which recognize Israel’s right to exist.

The king since then has embarked on an ambitious and so-far unsuccessful scheme to sidestep the PLO by cultivating an alternative Palestinian leadership in the West Bank. Palestinian sources said that, while Arafat had been reluctant to formally renounce the accord out of a desire to keep open his channels to Jordan, his decision to finally do so, albeit under pressure from the radicals, should be seen as a pointed reminder to Hussein that “he cannot take it upon himself to represent the Palestinians.”

Move to Isolate Syria

Indeed, officials from various PLO factions indicated that the main motive behind the unity agreement forged in Algiers was not to stiffen the PLO’s stance for its peace talks so much as it was to isolate Syria by wooing the radicals away from Damascus and affirming the PLO’s independence.

Chafing under the Syrian bit, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front and other Damascus-based radicals have been “laying the groundwork for a departure from Syria for some time,” a Popular Front official said. “The only question was whether we could reach a reconciliation with Arafat that would facilitate this. This has now been done.”

“The agreement announced today is one that will make everybody outside the PLO unhappy,” another PLO official said. “Egypt, Jordan and Syria will all be mad. But for the PLO, it is a great day.”