U.S. Rejects Arafat Bid to Visit U.N. : Declares He Is Tied to Terrorism in Denying Visa

The Reagan Administration, citing national security concerns, announced Saturday that it has denied Yasser Arafat a visa to enter the United States to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Thursday when it opens debate on Palestinian issues.

In a statement explaining the decision by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, the State Department charged that Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, “knows of, condones, and lends support” to terrorist acts against Americans by units of Fatah, the dominant group in the PLO headed by Arafat. “He is therefore an accessory to such terrorism,” the statement added.

The decision immediately sparked protests from Arab diplomats and Arab-American groups in the United States, who asserted that in denying Arafat’s visa request, the United States buckled under to pressure from Israel.

Israeli Envoy ‘Heartened’

Some American Jewish lobbying groups praised the decision. Israeli Ambassador Moshe Arad said his government was “heartened and encouraged” by Shultz’s action.

Coming after unsuccessful U.S. efforts to close the PLO’s observer mission at the United Nations in New York earlier this year, the decision also revived allegations that the United States is not living up to the terms of its 1947 agreement to be the host for the U.N. headquarters. It caused some, including Arafat, to call upon the United Nations to move the debate, and some of the organization’s key functions, from the New York headquarters to Geneva.

“We’re going to see to it that the question of Palestine is going to be discussed in a suitable forum--in Geneva,” said Clovis Maksoud, the League of Arab States’ ambassador to the United Nations. “It is not for the United States to determine who represents the Palestinian people.”

But the State Department argued that under the terms of the 1947agreement, the United States has a right to bar the entry of foreigners invited to New York by the United Nations “in order to safeguard its own security.”

“The U.S. government has convincing evidence that PLO elements have engaged in terrorism against Americans and others,” the State Department said. The department cited “a series of operations” undertaken by organizations known as Force 17 and Hawari--both units of the PLO--since November, 1985, when the PLO forswore the use of terrorism in a declaration in Cairo.

Hawari, which serves as Fatah’s special operations group, is named for its leader, Col. Hawari, the nom de guerre of Abdullah Abdul-Hamid Labib. A French court in October convicted him for his role in financing and assembling a cache of arms in Paris that was linked to bomb attacks throughout the 1980s. The State Department said that, according to its information, those attacks were directed against Middle Eastern and American targets.

The State Department also noted that U.S. law blocks the entry of PLO members into this country because of their association with an organization that the U.S. government believes engages in terrorist acts.

When lesser PLO members have applied for visas to work in the organization’s U.N. observer mission, Shultz generally has recommended that the Justice Department waive that law. In Arafat’s case, Shultz blocked the Arab leader’s visit simply by failing to request such a waiver.

The State Department said that its efforts to accommodate the PLO’s U.N. observer mission have given and will give the PLO “ample opportunity to make its position known” to U.N. members, even without Arafat’s presence at the Dec. 1 meeting.

Arafat, who generally travels on an Algerian passport, had formally requested a visitor’s visa late last week, although State Department sources said the Reagan Administration has known of the request for weeks.

Arafat last addressed the United Nations in 1974.

Several Mideast observers noted that Shultz’s denial of a visa to Arafat, coming on the heels of a PLO effort to formally accept U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, which implicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist, deals the Palestinians a slap in the face during a delicate phase in the Mideast peace process.

Calling the refusal “embarrassing and against American interests,” James Abourezk, chairman of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, added, “The intention of this rejection by Israel and George Shultz is clear: At the expense of free speech they seek to sabotage PLO peace overtures and to drive them to acts of desperation.”

But many Jewish leaders, who had urged the Reagan Administration to block Arafat’s entry, hailed Saturday’s decision.