Arafat Reaffirms His Acceptance of Israel, Opposition to Terror

After two days of talks with five prominent American Jews in Stockholm, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat announced Wednesday that he accepts the existence of Israel and opposes terrorism.

The two issues have been prime obstacles to a U.S.-PLO dialogue for more than a decade--and to a breakthrough in attempts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict for more than 20 years.

Swedish Foreign Minister Sten Andersson, who orchestrated the secret six-month effort to get the two delegations together, called the four-point statement by Arafat and the Jewish delegates a historic turning point.

“It means a breakthrough in the peace process,” he said at a news conference.

But Arafat himself, at another news conference, declined to confirm or repeat the statement’s key clauses, calling it “nothing new.”

He termed it “an accurate reading and interpretation” of the resolutions on recognition of Israel and on terrorism that were passed by the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s so-called parliament in exile, last month in Algiers.

“The PNC accepted two states, a Palestinian state and a Jewish state, Israel. Is that clear enough?” Arafat said.

At the same time, he affirmed that the Palestinian uprising in Israel’s occupied territories, which will mark its first anniversary Friday, will continue, evoking a sharp reaction from Israel. So far, about 300 Palestinians have died in the intifada, as the uprising is known in Arabic.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said the PLO “can declare anything when their intention and ambition and philosophy--the destruction of the state of Israel--remains unchanged.”

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres added: “Unless there is an end to violence and terror, a clear acceptance of (U.N. Resolution) 242, a readiness to negotiate in a free and peaceful situation, I believe all the substitutes are an exercise in public relations rather than a real choice in political terms.”

Several American Jewish groups already have condemned the initiative that resulted in Wednesday’s statement. But Los Angeles publisher and economist Stanley Sheinbaum, one of the five Americans in the delegation, said, “All these people reacted before they knew what was going on.”

Shultz Wary

The initial U.S. reaction was tepid, meanwhile. The four-point statement, issued jointly by Arafat and the five Americans, “seems to be a little further clarification (of the PNC resolutions), and I welcome that, but there’s still a considerable distance to go,” Secretary of State George P. Shultz said at a news conference after meeting with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in New York.

American delegation sources disclosed in an interview with The Times that Shultz had in fact been given a draft of Wednesday’s statement one day before he vetoed Arafat’s application late last month for a visa to speak at the United Nations. He decided to follow through anyway on the rejection, and the U.N. General Assembly will move to Geneva next week to hear Arafat’s speech.

The State Department’s counterterrorism office, which has played an increasingly important role in Middle East policy decisions over the last two years, took an even harder line.

“I don’t think this is going to be acceptable,” a spokesman said. “Everything Arafat said was in (the) context of the PNC declaration, which we’ve already decided did not go far enough.”

But at a news conference in Stockholm, the American delegates said they believe the impasse over PLO recognition of Israel, imposed in 1976 by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger as a condition for U.S. talks with the PLO, has been broken.

Rita Hauser, director of the U.S. branch of the Israeli-based International Center for Peace in the Middle East, said: “With this clarification of what were ambiguities in the Algiers document, we hope fervently that the United States will open a dialogue with the PLO.”

Main Points

The main points of the Stockholm statement say that the PLO:

-- “Accepted the existence of Israel as a state in the region.

-- “Declared its rejection and condemnation of terrorism in all its forms, including state terrorism.

-- “Agreed to enter into peace negotiations at an international conference under the auspices of the U.N., with the participation of the permanent members of the Security Council and the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, on an equal footing with the other parties to the conflict.”

The talks would take place “on the basis of U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination . . . including the right to an independent state.”

In comparison, last month’s PNC summit approved resolutions that said “the Palestine National Council confirms . . . the need to convene an effective international conference devoted to the Middle East problem, with the Palestinian issue as its essence . . . and with the participation of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and all parties to the conflict in the region, including the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people . . . and to consider that the international conference be held on the basis of U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 and the guarantee of the national and inalienable rights of the Palestinians.”

Resolution 242, adopted by the Security Council in 1967 after the Six-Day War, implicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist by calling for “the acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area.”

On terrorism, the PNC announced its “rejection of terrorism in all its forms, including state terrorism,” but noted that it recognized “the right of people to resist occupation, to struggle against foreign occupation and colonialism and racial discrimination.”

During his talks with the American Jews, Arafat made clear that the PLO no longer seeks the destruction of Israel, which it stipulated in the 1970s in the first PLO covenant.

“In English, he (Arafat) used three different words-- abrogate , nullify and eradicate --to describe how the PNC declaration in Algiers had affected that clause,” one of the Americans said.

The next step, delegation sources said in an interview, will be for the Swedish government to approach the United States. “The goal is to get contact going between the U.S. and the PLO on one hand, and the PLO and Israel on the other,” one of the Americans said. “The Swedes see their role as convincing the U.S. to do this.”