Decision Is Hailed by Arabs as ‘Historic’ Step : PLO ‘Very Happy,’ Will Meet to Select Delegation for Talks

Palestinian and other Arab diplomats Wednesday hailed the U.S. decision to open a formal dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization as a “historic” step that may finally lead to a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“We are very, very happy about this,” said Ahmed Abdul-Rahman, the PLO’s chief spokesman. “It is a historic change.”

Will Name Delegation

The PLO leadership, Abdul-Rahman added, “will meet within the next 48 hours to nominate the Palestinian delegation to participate in this dialogue.”

At the United Nations’ lakeside Geneva headquarters, where the U.N. General Assembly is currently in session, and in the lobbies of the hotels where the news from Washington reached most of the delegates here late Wednesday night, reaction to the announcement was a mixture of disbelief, jubilation and profound relief.

“We worked very, very hard on this all day,” a senior Egyptian official said. “Everyone was phoning (Secretary of State George P.) Shultz constantly. Still, I was afraid we wouldn’t get it, but I’m very glad and very relieved that we finally did.”

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Shultz said the United States had decided to lift the 13-year-old ban on official U.S. contacts with the PLO following a statement made here earlier in the day by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The statement, Shultz said, satisfied the three longstanding conditions the United States had set for opening a dialogue with the PLO--acceptance of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, recognition of Israel’s right to exist, and a renunciation of terrorism.

Arafat, who left Geneva suddenly Wednesday night shortly before Shultz announced the policy change, said in the statement read to reporters that the PLO recognizes “the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to exist in peace and security, including the the state of Palestine, Israel and other neighbors according to Resolutions 242 and 338.”

On the question of terrorism, Arafat said the PLO had made it “crystal clear” but “repeats for the record that we totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism, including individual, group and state terrorism.”

Western and Arab diplomats here noted that the language used by Arafat in referring to these three points was almost identical to the wording he used in the speech he gave to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.

While that speech was hailed by both Arab and West European envoys as essentially fulfilling the U.S. conditions, it was rejected by the State Department as still being too ambiguous on several important points.

According to several diplomats who helped to draft the statement that Arafat made on Wednesday, and who were involved in the intensive discussions that took place with Washington throughout the day, the key difference was in the formulation of the reference to the right of all parties, including Israel, to exist in peace and security.

In his U.N. address, Arafat referred to the need for a peace settlement that would guarantee “the security and peace of all states” in the region and, at another point, to the convening of a peace conference bringing together “the parties concerned, including the state of Palestine, Israel and other neighbors.”

The key, from the American point of view, was “to connect the reference to Israel and to its right to exist clearly and unambiguously in the same sentence,” one diplomat said.

“Basically, everything in the statement accepted by the Americans was also in Arafat’s speech on Tuesday,” another diplomat added. “We told Arafat to crystallize it and put it all together in one clear statement, which he did.”

Another factor, which was at least equally if not more important, in the opinion of diplomats here, was the concerted pressure brought to bear on Washington by a number of Western and moderate Arab states to begin a dialogue with the PLO.

“Nearly everyone was on the phone to Shultz,” a senior Arab envoy said. “We told him that the U.S. failure to do this now, after the PLO has made so many important concessions, would ruin Arafat and the other moderates in the PLO and have disastrous consequences for the peace process,” the envoy added.

With the exception of Israel and Iran, virtually every other country that has addressed the General Assembly over the past two days has praised the moderate tone of Arafat’s speech and called upon Israel and the United States to open a dialogue with the PLO.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and other Arab leaders were among those who spoke to Shultz personally, some of them more than once during the day, diplomats said.

However, by all accounts the most pivotal role was played by Swedish Foreign Minister Sten Sture Andersson, the architect of a similar, though not quite as far reaching, statement that Arafat made in Stockholm last week following a meeting with a group of American Jews.

“We deeply appreciate the role that the Swedish foreign minister played,” said Abdul-Rahman, the PLO spokesman. “He worked with us day and night to achieve this result.”

Andersson was the diplomatic go-between who, following Arafat’s Stockholm statement, arranged what PLO sources here said was to have been a meeting between Shultz and a PLO delegation before the end of this month.

That arrangement fell through on Tuesday, however, after Arafat deleted a more specific reference to Israel’s right to exist from his U.N. address because of strong opposition by two hard-line factions within the PLO, these sources said.

“He (Andersson) worked constantly throughout the day to salvage the agreement,” one Arab diplomat said.

There was speculation here that the language that emerged in the end may still have been less strong than the original deleted version because Shultz said that the U.S. dialogue with the PLO would be conducted through Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, where the PLO maintains its political headquarters.

Reached by telephone from Geneva, U.S. officials in Tunisia refused to comment.

Arafat, who shortly after reading the statment to reporters at a news conference left Switzerland for what PLO officials said would be a brief European tour, also was not available for comment.

Although the dialogue will not start at the level that the PLO clearly wanted, the U.S. decision to open talks with the organization for the first time in 13 years was still welcomed by officials here as a major breakthrough brought about by the intifada , the yearlong Palestinian uprising against Israeli-rule in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“This American decision represents a historic change in this history of our struggle for recognition in the Middle East,” Abdul-Rahman said. “We hope it will lead very soon to concrete results, to a settlement that will stop the killing once and for all.”

Other diplomats noted, however, that the U.S. decision was not tantamount to formal recognition of the PLO or an endorsement of its demand to set up an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And they also expressed concern that the dialogue, even if it gets under way, could be quickly derailed if radical PLO factions succeed in pressuring Arafat to renege on the commitments that the United States evidently thinks Arafat made in his statement on Wednesday.

They noted, for instance, that while Arafat spoke in the statement of Israel’s right to exist, he refused to say flatly, in response to a question afterwards, whether this meant that the PLO now formally recognizes Israel.

Asked to give a clear “yes or no,” answer to the question of whether the PLO now “recognizes the right of the state of Israel to exist,” Arafat, with evident irritation in his voice, responded: “Didn’t you read my speech? Please take a copy and read it. It is entirely clear. What more do you want? Do you want me to striptease? It would be unseemly.”

But, while this response clearly skirted the question, Arafat emphasized what he said was the PLO’s determination to recognize and accept Israel as part of a peace settlement that would also lead to the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

“Our desire for peace is a strategy, not a tactic,” Arafat said. “We are committed to peace, come what may. Our statehood . . . will bring peace to both the Palestinians and the Israelis.

“Self-determination means survival for us, but our survival does not mean that we intend to destroy the Israelis,” he said.

“We seek peace,” he declared, for the sake of “our children and Israel’s children who must find a way of living together in peace, not war.”

Shultz’s Washington announcement was received in Geneva on live television, and the Arab response was immediate and joyous.

“This is a real breakthrough,” said one Palestinian delegate. “We have what we have been wanting for years--recognition by the United States of the PLO . . . “

An Egyptian delegate said: “This is the most intelligent gesture by the United States for years in terms of coming to grips with the Palestinian problem.”

Arafat, who delayed his scheduled 11 a.m. press conference until 7 p.m., reportedly spent the time working on compromise language.

During the day, according to sources here, the Swedes managed to persuade U.S. officials in Washington and the PLO leaders, headquartered at the Inter-Continental Hotel here, to accept the formulation that Arafat eventually read in a statement before his press conference late Wednesday.

As to what the language changes amounted to, “It’s a matter of semantics that only a Ph.D would understand,” said one source here with contacts to some of the negotiators.

Arafat was described as furious Tuesday night after State Department spokesman Charles Redman rejected the speech Arafat made before the General Assembly earlier in the day. But late Wednesday, the PLO leader was all smiles.

And one Palestinian said, “Twenty-four hours ago, America was spurning us. Today, we are about to talk. From now on, anything can happen.”

Times staff writer William Tuohy contributed to this story from Geneva.