British Minister Hosts Arafat Aide in London : Easing of Stand on PLO Seen Adding to Pressure on U.S., Israeli Governments

In a significant policy shift that brings pressure on both Israel and the United States to modify their stance toward the Palestine Liberation Organization, a senior British official met here Friday with a top aide to PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

The meeting between William Waldegrave, Britain’s minister of state responsible for the Middle East, and PLO representative Bassam abu Sharif was the highest-level meeting Britain has held with the Palestinian group in five years. It was the first session of its kind ever held in London.

“This is quite big stuff,” a British Foreign Office spokesman said. “It’s an important meeting with an important man.”

Anniversary of Uprising

The breakthrough occurred on the first anniversary of the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It followed assurances from the PLO that it recognizes Israel’s right to exist and is prepared to negotiate a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict on the basis of U.N. Resolution 242, proposing an exchange of occupied land for peace.

Abu Sharif reiterated that stand to reporters immediately after his nearly one-hour meeting at the Foreign Office.

“I have told Mr. Waldegrave that the Palestinians are fully for international guarantees for all states in the region to live behind secure borders--and when we say all states, including Israel; and that we renounce all sorts of terrorism and violence, no matter what the source of this terrorism is.”

“Mr. Bassam abu Sharif unequivocally adopted the position which we have set as the test for ministerial meetings with representatives of the PLO,” Waldegrave said in a British Broadcasting Corp. radio interview.

If it is confirmed by Arafat himself next week during a scheduled appearance before a U.N. General Assembly meeting in Geneva, the British official added, “Then it becomes crystal clear that the next steps must come from Israel.

”. . . We should ask for exactly the same declarations from Israel--namely, that they would accept U.N. Resolution 242 . . . and they should accept early progress toward an international conference at which negotiations between the two principal parties of Israel and the Palestinians can settle these matters.”

Supports Peace Conference

In a separate statement, the British minister said London considers an international conference “the most suitable framework for negotiations” and that “efforts to convene it should now be pursued urgently.”

The Israeli leadership is bitterly divided over the concept of an international conference and overwhelmingly opposes any talks involving the PLO.

Israeli Ambassador Yoav Biran said here Friday that he regretted the British action. “Such a meeting, which serves only the public-relations purposes of the PLO, is unhelpful,” he contended. “It is not conducive to the promotion of the peace process, in which both Britain and Israel are interested.”

The Reagan Administration reluctantly threw its weight behind an international conference early this year, but it has consistently refused to meet with the PLO under terms of a nearly 15-year-old pledge to Israel first made by then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

The United States is not formally allied with Israel, but it does have far more extensive political, military and economic ties with the Jewish state than with any Arab nation.

While denying that Friday’s meeting was meant to pressure the United States, a British government spokesman commented, “If we bring home forcefully to the Americans that we consider there has been a significant change in the PLO position, that’s to the good.”

Mideast policy is one area where Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Reagan Administration have had subtle but significant differences.

“It is only the United States that has the real clout in that area, and therefore it’s only the United States that has the key,” a senior Thatcher aide explained. However, he added, “We have never actually succeeded in getting the United States to recognize that message.”

The British hope that President-elect George Bush will adopt a more aggressive Middle East peace policy when he enters the White House next month, and Friday’s move was seen here as one way of underlining that desire.

The last time a senior British official met with a top PLO leader was in 1983, when Home Secretary Douglas Hurd--then in the same Foreign Office job that Waldegrave holds now--met in Tunis with Farouk Kaddoumi, sometimes referred to as the PLO’s foreign minister. Since then, contacts have been restricted to low-level representatives.

Scheduled talks here with top PLO officials in October, 1985, collapsed only hours before they were to begin when the Palestinians refused to support a previously agreed joint statement that included recognition of Israel.

Foreign Office officials say the government began to review the situation again after last month’s Palestine National Council meeting in Algiers, which implicitly endorsed the so-called two-state solution--a Palestinian state existing side by side with Israel.

About 50 mostly Arab and other Muslim countries have since recognized the Palestinian state declared by the PNC, and rumors began to circulate soon after the Algiers meeting that British officials would encourage what they saw as a significant move by Arafat toward moderation by agreeing to a high-level meeting.

Those hopes quickly faded, however, when the United States rejected the PLO statements as insufficient and, citing his support for international terrorism, refused to grant Arafat a visa to address the United Nations in New York. Although the U.S. action received near-unanimous condemnation in a U.N. vote, Britain abstained.

On Wednesday, Arafat went further during a meeting in Stockholm with five prominent American Jews, stating explicitly: “The PNC accepted two states, a Palestinian state and a Jewish state. Israel. Is that clear enough?”

The Reagan Administration said Thursday that the Stockholm statement still did not go far enough. “No one contests the principle that legitimate Palestinian rights must be addressed,” said Richard W. Murphy, U.S. undersecretary of state for Middle East affairs. “But the vagueness and ambiguous words which the PLO has used to address terrorism, and actions taken by some elements of the PLO since 1985, point openly to the need for change in Arafat’s position on this issue.”

Nonetheless, for the British, the Stockholm statement apparently provided the opening it had been seeking.