Egg on Our Face

The United States is being made to look foolish before the world, with its Congress appearing scornful of the rule of law while the Justice Department--whose job it is to enforce and uphold the law--weakly wrings its hands and vacillates over what to do. Behind this international embarrassment is last year’s ill-advised congressional demand that the Palestine Liberation Organization’s observer mission at the United Nations be shut down. That mission, though, does not exist on American sufferance. It is in New York at the invitation of the United Nations, and now there has come a nearly unanimous U.N. General Assembly vote declaring that the effort to close the mission violates U.S. treaty obligations.

That same opinion is held by the State Department, which finds that this country’s 1947 host-government agreement with the United Nations precludes interference with U.N.-accredited missions. Under this agreement countries that the United States doesn’t recognize--North Korea, for example--or countries that it officially finds to be sponsors of terrorism--like Iran, Libya and Syria--are free to maintain missions and offices at the invitation of the United Nations, without U.S. permission.

Why now, nearly 14 years after the PLO was voted U.N. observer status, has Congress suddenly moved to cast it out? A one-word answer would be politics. A two-word answer would be Israel lobby. The main promoter of last year’s legislation to send the PLO packing was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group of considerable influence that on the eve of an election year had little trouble rounding up support for its pet legislative project. Among the sponsors of the measure were Reps. Jack Kemp and Richard Gephardt and Sens. Bob Dole and Paul Simon, presidential candidates all.

Congress said that it moved against the PLO to show that it could get tough with a terrorist organization. Yes, but . . . . The PLO is indeed guilty of terrorism, but no one has ever accused its U.N. mission or its information office in Washington--which also has been ordered closed--of violating any laws. Moreover, as noted above, even those branded by the U.S. government as sponsors of terrorism can enjoy a diplomatic status with the United Nations that Washington simply must accept.

That is the central issue here. The United States has solemn treaty commitments, and Congress cannot for its own satisfaction order those commitments to be ignored or violated. Before this embarrassment goes on, before the World Court gets involved on the U.N. demand that the United States submit to arbitration, let Congress rectify its blunder. Congress of course has the right to look stupid if it chooses. It has no right, though, to insist that this country be made to look absurd.