PLO, After Urgent Talks, Sending Mission to Jordan : Cutting of West Bank Ties Cited

The Palestine Liberation Organization, after holding urgent talks in Baghdad overnight, decided to send a mission to Jordan within 48 hours to discuss King Hussein’s cutting of ties with the West Bank, an Arab diplomat said today.

The diplomat said the mission will be headed by a member of the PLO executive committee.

He said the PLO’s Central Council held urgent talks that continued into this morning on Sunday’s announcement by Hussein that he has decided to sever Jordan’s links with the West Bank in deference to the PLO and to allow the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state. (Story, Page 4.)

A PLO spokesman described the Jordanian move as a very sensitive issue.

”. . . Abu Ammar (PLO chairman Yasser Arafat) has ordered that all comments be made by him or with his approval,” he said. The PLO leader was in Baghdad for the meetings.

A top Arafat aide, Bassam abu Sharif, said in Abu Dhabi that the Jordanian decision was not intended to harm ties with the PLO.

PLO a Key Party

He said it made clear to the world that the PLO is a key party to the Middle East conflict.

Israel, which occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, allowed Jordan to continue running West Bank affairs. But Israel refuses to deal with the PLO, and it is difficult to see how it would allow the Palestinian group to take over Jordanian functions.

The Arab diplomat said the PLO would have to tackle dozens of serious matters.

Among these is how to pay the wages of 18,000 Palestinians on the Jordanian payroll in the West Bank who he said will now lose their salaries.

A senior Jordanian official said Sunday that he did not know how the PLO will fill the vacuum left by the king’s decision.

“It is a big challenge for the PLO and the West Bankers. The PLO will have to meet their people’s needs. God knows how they plan to do it,” he said.

No Effect on U.S. Plan

In Washington, the Reagan Administration said today that Jordan’s decision to sever formal ties to Palestinians in the West Bank will not derail or alter a U.S. peace plan for the Middle East.

But White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, who said Jordan’s King Hussein informed the United States in advance of his actions, refused to comment on whether they will make peace more difficult to achieve.

“It does not alter our approach,” Fitzwater told reporters at a briefing. “Our policy is not changed in any way by this action.

“Whether it is more difficult or less difficult I’ll leave it to others to judge,” he said.

Hussein on Sunday declared his support for an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank.

Won’t Give Up ’67 Gains

The U.S. peace plan, which Secretary of State George P. Shultz has promoted through several visits to the region, stops short of advocating an independent Palestinian state but calls for Palestinian participation in talks with Israel as part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, saying Israel will never give up the territories it seized in 1967, questioned whether there is a single Palestinian people.

Shamir said a new Jordanian policy, distinguishing between West Bank Palestinians and those under full Jordanian rule in the East Bank, “deals a blow to the theory of the existence of a Palestinian people.”

The issue of a Palestinian people “belongs to propaganda,” he said in remarks issued by his spokesman.

Shamir said Palestinian autonomy, as envisaged in Israel’s 1978 Camp David accords with Egypt, and a peace pact with Jordan are the realistic approach to the Palestinian problem.