U.N. Delegate Says Tempest on Arafat Will Pass Quickly

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday night that he considers the furor over the U.S. refusal to issue a visa to Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to be “a tempest in a teapot . . . that will not last a long time.”

In an interview at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim before a speech to the World Affairs Council of Orange County, Vernon A. Walters said he is neither surprised nor dismayed by the U.N.’s 151-2 vote Wednesday deploring the U.S. action.

“I predicted it, I forecast it, and that’s what I told Washington would happen,” he said.

Walters, however, said he thinks that the controversy over Arafat will lead to the United Nations making an unprecedented move to Geneva for a special meeting in mid-December, so that Arafat can deliver his remarks. Arab states have already made such a proposal.

Asked whether the United States would attend such a meeting, Walter said: “My understanding is that we will go, and I expect to go.”

He said the U.S. decision to bar Arafat is not unprecedented. Since he assumed the U.N. post in 1985, Walters said, the United States barred an Iranian minister. (Ali Shams Ardakani, an Iranian envoy to a U.N. disarmament conference, was refused a visa last October.) It caused little stir because the minister “didn’t have as good a lobby as Arafat” does, he said.

Walters’ visit to Orange County had been scheduled long before the furor last week about the U.S. decision to prevent Arafat’s visit.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz announced Saturday that no visa would be issued to the PLO chairman because Arafat “knows of, condones and lends support” to terrorist acts aimed against Americans.

On Wednesday, Shultz said the United States would not reverse its decision.

An overwhelming majority of U.N. members voted Wednesday to deplore the U.S. decision against Arafat. By a 151-2 vote, the U.N. approved a resolution that “deplores the failure by the host country (the United States) to approve granting of the requested entry visa” to Arafat.

Opposed by U.S. and Israel

Only the United States and Israel voted against the resolution. Britain abstained.

Arab members of the U.N. said Wednesday that they plan to seek passage of a resolution that would require the United Nations to convene in Geneva a special meeting to hear Arafat. The session, if held, would be about Dec. 13 and would be the first time the United Nations has ever left the United States as a protest move.

Arafat has asked to speak to the United Nations to explain the PLO’s Nov. 15 declaration of an independent Palestinian state.

The boundaries of his newly declared state were not specified in the announcement, but the PLO said Jerusalem would be the country’s capital. The entire city of Jerusalem is claimed by Israel.

Walters said Wednesday that he expects the PLO’s Geneva proposal to come to a U.N. vote because “everything comes to a vote in the United Nations.”

Succeeded Kirkpatrick

Asked how the United States would vote, he said, “We’ll come to that question when we reach it.”

Walters, 71, became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1985, succeeding Jeane J. Kirkpatrick. Walters had earlier been an ambassador-at-large for 4 years in the Reagan Administration, visiting more than 100 countries, often on top-secret missions.

During his confirmation hearings before the Senate in 1985, Walters said he would rate the United Nations “about 6 out of 10” as an effective organization. He said he hoped to raise that score to 8 on a scale of 10.

Walters is a retired three-star Army general who was deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1972-76.