Score One for PLO

Secretary of State George P. Shultz has allowed emotion to override good judgment by letting his personal distaste for Yasser Arafat trigger an unnecessary confrontation with the United Nations. The chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization asked for a U.S. visa so that he could accept an invitation to address the United Nations in New York. In denying that request, Shultz cited Arafat’s connections with terrorism, which was perfectly proper, while subjecting to his own dubious legal interpretation the 41-year-old U.S. agreement “not to impose any impediments to transit” on persons invited to this country by the United Nations. That was not proper, not wise and not convincing.

The claimed legal basis for ignoring the Headquarters Agreement with the United Nations is a clause that gives the United States the right to bar any U.N.-invited alien “in order to safeguard its own security.” That is a straightforward reservation, the purpose of which surely is to reinforce U.S. authority to keep out anyone it knows or suspects may commit espionage, sabotage, assassination or other acts that threaten lives or property. In other words, the agreement with the United Nations doesn’t negate the inherent right to self-protection.

But exactly what plausible danger to national security would Arafat’s presence at the United Nations pose? He was invited by the U.N. secretary general to come and make a speech, just as he did in 1974. He is not coming to set off a car bomb in mid-town Manhattan. In fact, Shultz makes no claim that Arafat would pose an imminent threat. His exclusion, rather, is for past rather than for prospective activities. That is perhaps a morally laudable rationale, but in the circumstances it is a legally doubtful one.

Elements of the PLO, the State Department says, have engaged in terrorism against Americans and others. Arafat, as the chairman of the PLO, “knows of, condones and lends support to such acts; he therefore is an accessory to terrorism.” All true. But . . . if knowing of, condoning and lending support to terrorism are reasons for disqualifying persons from entering the United States on U.N. business, then surely consistency and national honor require that the United States stop granting visas for U.N. visits to representatives of Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, the Soviet Union, South Africa and no doubt to officials from a score of other states whose involvement with terrorism is clear.

In denying Arafat’s visa request, the United States has committed two blunders: It has challenged the accommodation on extraterritorial status that prevailed for more than 40 years, provoking an angry organizational response from the United Nations that can be expected to produce political problems for the United States for some time to come. And it has virtually compelled many member states that would otherwise have reacted to an Arafat visit with indifference to rally behind the principle of unimpeded transit for U.N. guests and so, at least implicitly, to rally behind Arafat.

What all this adds up to is an international propaganda coup for the PLO. Arafat has probably gained more by being denied the chance to speak before the General Assembly in New York than he would have gained had he been permitted to come, to speak, and soon enough to go merrily on his way.