No Further Cuts in Its Role on West Bank, Jordan Tells PLO

A PLO delegation ended three days of talks with Jordanian leaders Sunday, and officials said the two sides agreed that Jordan will take no further measures to abolish its influence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestine Liberation Organization also reasserted its desire for confederation with Jordan after a Palestinian state has been established.

A senior Palestinian leader was quoted in a Paris-based weekly as saying that the PLO is leaning toward establishing a provisional government in the Israeli-occupied territories instead of a government in exile.

The newspaper Journal du Dimanche quoted Salah Khalaf, deputy chairman of PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s Fatah wing, as saying in an interview that the decision on a provisional government might be made at a meeting next month of the Palestine National Council, the organization’s legislature.

The Amman meetings were the first high-level discussions between Jordanian and PLO officials since King Hussein’s decision two weeks ago to renounce Jordan’s claim to sovereignty over the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Hussein also canceled a $1.3-billion West Bank development plan, ended payments to thousands of civil servants in the occupied territories and suspended the lower chamber of Jordan’s Parliament, half of whose members were from the West Bank.

The king said he was turning over to the PLO full responsibility for the occupied territories.

But a PLO statement issued Sunday night in Amman indicated that the PLO does not want Jordan to reduce its influence in the territories any further.