U.N. Votes for Arbitration on PLO Offices

By an overwhelming margin, the U.N. General Assembly voted Wednesday to initiate arbitration proceedings aimed at stopping the United States from closing the New York offices of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The vote was 143-1, with Israel casting the only negative vote. The United States did not vote on the question, which it believes has been taken up prematurely.

Congress, in an anti-terrorism bill adopted last December, ordered the PLO offices closed and gave the Justice Department until March 21 to shut them down. The Reagan Administration has not yet acted on the directive and is divided over whether to do so.

The vote was a defeat for the United States in a world body that receives a quarter of its operating budget from U.S. public funds but in which U.S. prestige and influence has waned in recent years. In three days of debate, Washington’s friends and critics assailed the U.S. action as illegal and said it would trample on the U.N.’s right to choose its members independently.

Wednesday’s decision mirrors a lopsided U.N. vote of last December, when the General Assembly first called upon the United States not to close the PLO mission.

The action was the first step in a process that could end up in the International Court of Justice. The court could be asked to adjudicate the dispute if negotiators for Washington and the United Nations fail to reach agreement.

This would be the first time such a dispute between the United Nations and the United States has been subject to arbitration under U.N. auspices, State Department sources said. But Washington’s disputes with other countries have been referred to the U.N.-sponsored World Court, and the United States has ignored many of the tribunal’s rulings.

The Arab League, which called for the special session of the General Assembly, urged President Reagan on Wednesday to preempt the arbitration proceeding and declare U.N. missions exempt from the law he signed in January.

‘An Easier Way Out’

“There is an easier way out” of the dispute than arbitration under U.N. auspices, said Ambassador Clovis Maksoud, permanent observer to the United Nations from the Arab League.

“The President could use his constitutional prerogative in the domain of foreign policy . . . and exclude the observer mission from applicability to this law,” he said.

Reagan appeared to leave that avenue open when he signed the legislation in January. The President complained then that the provision directing closure of the PLO offices, which was contained in a State Department spending bill, conflicted with his constitutional powers as chief executor of the nation’s foreign policy.

Maksoud, who is to meet today with Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead on the issue, added that such an action would “signal the seriousness of (the) diplomatic undertakings” of Secretary of State George P. Shultz in the Middle East.

The controversy has dogged the peacemaking efforts of Shultz, who is headed back to the Middle East trying to broker a settlement on the future of the Israeli-occupied territories. He is expected to return Saturday to Washington, where he is a key player in the Administration dispute over the legality of the congressional move to close the PLO offices.

The State Department’s legal counsel has ruled the measure illegal, although the provision has support in the Justice Department.

The General Assembly resolved to stay in session until the dispute over the PLO observer mission is settled, a measure that Maksoud said would allow Washington “to examine the causes of its isolation” on the issue.

Zehdi Labib Terzi, the PLO’s chief observer at the United Nations, said that if Washington closes the PLO mission, the General Assembly should consider moving its headquarters out of the United States.