Arab Leaders Pledge Funds for Palestinian Uprising

Arab leaders, ending a special three-day summit meeting, pledged Thursday to extend “all necessary assistance in all necessary forms” to ensure the continuation of the six-month-old Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Conference sources said a mini-grouping of wealthy Arab gulf states worked out a package of financial aid to support both the uprising and the so-called “front-line” states facing Israel--Jordan and Syria, along with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

It was not immediately clear, however, if the PLO, which had requested $1 million per day from the gulf states, received all that it sought.

Also, in what initially looked like a setback for the PLO, there was no indication in the final communique that the 21 members of the Arab League had reached a consensus on the manner in which the funds would be distributed.

A senior PLO spokesman, Bassam abu Sharif, said before the summit’s conclusion that all specific financial arrangements--including sums and the manner of their distribution--”would remain secret.”

But it was understood that the PLO had lobbied hard at the summit to be designated as the only channel through which pan-Arab financial support for the uprising would be distributed.

Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich states strongly objected to this, however, and conference sources said no specific mechanism for funneling the funds to the occupied territories had been established.

“Basically, everybody will pump in whatever they can in every way they can . . . through the PLO, Jordan and various other institutions,” one conference source said.

The Arab leaders hailed the intifada, as the Palestinians call the uprising, and said they have agreed on a set of unspecified political, financial and material efforts to “consolidate its effectiveness and guarantee its continuation and escalation.”

Recognition of PLO Affirmed

Echoing the pronouncements of previous Arab summits, they affirmed their recognition of the PLO as “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” and called for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

They also stressed the Arab view that an international peace conference, convened under U.N. auspices and with the PLO attending on “an equal footing” with the other parties, is the only acceptable forum for Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The final communique criticized U.S. policy in the Middle East as “hostile to Palestinian national rights” and a “contradiction of the responsibilities of the United States as a superpower in achieving and preserving peace.”

No Direct Criticism of U.S.

With the PLO’s consent, however, it avoided any direct criticism of the U.S. peace initiative being pursued by Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

Instead, it referred only to “current efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East that are slow and ineffective and unable to alter the Israeli position which insists on rejecting peace.”

The moderate tone of the communique’s language on this point was a disappointment to radical Arab states that had wanted the summit to strongly and unequivocally reject the Shultz plan.

Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, who caused an uproar at the start of the summit by telling his fellow leaders to “go to hell,” abruptly walked out of the final session after accusing his colleagues of “selling out” to the United States.

Incoherent Denunciation

He reappeared later, however, to deliver a long, rambling and, for the most part, incoherent denunciation of colonialism around the world.

The PLO had come to the summit, convened by Algeria to coordinate support for the intifada, with a working paper that also sought a strong and specific rejection of the Shultz plan.

But it quickly dropped that demand under what was said to be heavy pressure from Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab states not to close the door to continuing American peace efforts. The gulf states also did not want the summit to take a strongly anti-American stand at a time when they are relying on U.S. naval protection for their shipping in the Persian Gulf, conference sources said.

While Palestinian officials strenuously denied it, the impression conveyed to many observers here was that PLO leader Yasser Arafat may have come out of this summit with diminished prestige, the strong endorsement of the Palestinian uprising notwithstanding.

Frustrated With PLO

The popular and tenacious revolt by tens of thousands of young Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the past six months reflects not only the Palestinians’ opposition to Israeli rule but anger and frustration over what they perceive as the PLO’s inability to advance their cause.

Thus, apart from the hard horse-trading over financial support, one of the main aims of this summit, as far as the PLO was concerned, was to demonstrate to the young and militant leaders of the intifada that their aging and exiled leadership is still effective.

Judging from the tone of the final communique, it did not appear that Arafat had achieved this. Certainly, the decisions announced Thursday night fell far short of the expectations of the intifada’s leadership, who in a clandestine communique issued on the eve of this summit appealed to the Arab states to “demolish all suspect peace plans” and to open their borders to guerrilla attacks against Israel.

PLO spokesmen sought to convey a different impression by taking a harder line against the Shultz plan in their briefings to reporters.

Shultz Plan ‘Dead and Buried’

“The Shultz plan, which does not address the crux of the problem, that is the Palestinian problem, is dead and buried,” Sharif said.

Nevertheless, stripped of their rhetoric, the decisions adopted by the Algiers summit seemed unusually moderate in tone, allaying the fears of some Western diplomats that a new “radical axis” would emerge in support of the Palestinian uprising, analysts said.

While this assessment, based only on the public communique, did not take into account the number of secret decisions and commitments said to have been made at the summit, it appeared to reflect the general consensus of officials attending the meeting.

“A lot of compromises were made,” one Palestinian source said, adding that “compromise is the name of a game at these gatherings.”