Syria, PLO Seek to Heal Rift Despite Arafat’s Absence

The leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, gathered for the first time in years in this capital, spent Friday discussing how to repair their bitter, long-ruptured relations with the Syrian government.

They used the mourning period after the funeral here of Khalil Wazir, the assassinated deputy leader of the PLO, to come up with a formula to heal the rift that can satisfy the various factions in the organization as well as the Syrian government.

The PLO’s goal in improving ties with Syria would be to seek a common approach to fight the Middle East peace plan put forward by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, as well as to devise a way to support the four-month-old Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The major obstacle to the current talks here is the absence of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who decided not to attend the funeral of his boyhood friend Wazir, better known by his nom de guerre , Abu Jihad, who was shot to death last Saturday in Tunis by suspected Israeli agents.

Arafat’s organization split deeply with the Syrians in 1983 because of the fighting between their respective forces in Lebanon, and Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Assad have not been on speaking terms since.

Opposes Shultz Plan

Palestinian sources described the PLO’s talks with Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam late Thursday and early Friday as productive, saying that Khaddam stressed that the militant Arabs should oppose the Shultz plan for an international conference because its terms are much too favorable to Israel.

Among the Palestinian leaders attending the meeting were the effective foreign minister of the PLO, Farouk Kaddoumi; George Habash, head of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Nayef Hawatmeh, chief of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. All were reported to be in favor of restoring their alliance with Syria before the next Arab summit conference in June.

The Syrians have insisted that no negotiations can be held on the Middle East unless they are assured of the return of the occupied Golan Heights--an area that Israeli leaders say they will never give up.

Syria also would like to see the PLO reduce its contacts with Egypt to a bare minimum, because Assad has not forgiven Egypt for signing a separate peace treaty with Israel.

Furthermore, Damascus always has wished to exert more control over Palestinian activities in Lebanon, although Palestinian resistance to such control has led in some cases to bloody fighting.

Both Syria and the PLO are keen to develop a strategy that would support the Palestinian uprising, whose strength and continuing local direction took everyone by surprise, since it was only peripherally influenced by elements outside the occupied territory.

Basically, Syria also wants to make sure that King Hussein of Jordan does not conclude a separate agreement concerning the occupied territories in any kind of a peace conference set up by the United States.

Assad also reportedly was taken by surprise at his meeting last year with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who urged him to develop a position with the PLO that could be presented jointly in the event of an international peace conference at which Moscow was a participant.

Meanwhile, Syrian Information Minister Mohammed Salman told a group of Western reporters that Syria is “very keen” to reach a satisfactory agreement with the PLO and that the funeral of Wazir might facilitate that task.

The minister, a member of the ruling Baath Arab Socialist Party, said that while Shultz will always be cordially received in Damascus, he thinks the U.S. peace mission is a waste of time because it does not come to grips with the demands of the Syrians or the Palestinians.