Arafat Vows to ‘Do Our Best’ to Curb Terror

Yasser Arafat said Saturday that the leaders of the PLO “will do our best” to curb all acts of Palestinian terrorism and that the political dialogue begun with the United States will continue.

Speaking to reporters after his return to Tunis from Europe, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization said he is satisfied with the first round of talks held Friday between four senior PLO officials and the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, Robert H. Pelletreau Jr.

“It was a step in the right direction,” Arafat said of the 90-minute meeting, the first between U.S. and PLO officials in more than 13 years.

There will be more meetings, Arafat said, and the PLO’s aim will be to persuade the Americans--and through them the Israelis--to work for the convening of a U.N.-sponsored peace conference on the Middle East.

Limited Influence Cited

Concerning terrorism, which he formally renounced in Geneva last week while attending a special session of the U.N. General Assembly, Arafat noted that he can speak only for the PLO, not the radical factions based in Syria, Libya and Lebanon that have split with the organization.

Nevertheless, he added, “we will do our best to stop all this (terrorism).”

However, he also lashed out at Israel for the increasingly harsh methods it has used in trying to suppress the yearlong Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Noting that five more Palestinian youths died of wounds inflicted by the Israeli army Friday, Arafat said, “We want those who speak about terrorism to remember the state terrorism which Israel is practicing against our people.”

The reference to “those who speak about terrorism” was clearly aimed at the United States, which emphasized this topic in Friday’s talks, putting the PLO on notice that its continuing dialogue with Washington depends upon its ability to keep the promises that Arafat made in a statement read at a press conference Wednesday in Geneva.

There, Arafat, in the clearest and most unequivocal terms he has used to date, recognized Israel’s right to exist and renounced “all forms of terrorism . . . including individual, group and state terrorism.” That pledge, in turn, prompted Secretary of State George P. Shultz to lift Washington’s 13-year-old ban on contacts with the PLO.

Now that the United States and the PLO are finally talking to one another, the main question being asked in Tunis and other Arab capitals is where the peace process goes from here.

Khaled Hassan, one of Arafat’s senior political advisers, said that while the first meeting with Pelletreau was procedural and served mainly “to break the ice,” the PLO hopes that the next session will lead to the start of “serious and positive” efforts to prepare for an international peace conference.

He said that the next meeting, for which no date has been fixed yet, will probably occur after Jan. 1 but before the Reagan Administration leaves office on Jan. 20. He conceded that “serious negotiations” probably won’t get under way until President-elect George Bush assumes office but added that the PLO hopes a peace conference can be convened before the end of next year.

In this, however, other observers think that the PLO, still slightly intoxicated by its diplomatic successes over the past month, may be expecting more of the United States than Washington is either willing or able to do.

Upbeat Predictions

PLO officials insist they do not underestimate the problems ahead. But their upbeat predictions about the convening of an international conference make it difficult to avoid the impression that, with the attainment of a dialogue with the United States, they now feel that the biggest hurdle has been overcome and that, from here on, it is simply a matter of persuading the United States to tell Israel what to do.

Emphasizing the need to move on to more pressing matters, these officials are now beginning to show their irritation when the subject of terrorism is brought up.

When Pelletreau raised it, “We told him he should take that up with the other side because we stopped practicing terrorism long ago, and it is we who are now the victims of terrorism--Israeli terrorism,” Hassan said. “With us, we said, you have to talk about peace.”

Nevertheless, it is a topic that is likely to dog the dialogue in the months ahead, especially given the possibility that radical Palestinian splinter groups may try to derail the peace process by staging terrorist attacks either against the PLO itself or in its name.

The PLO, in an effort to prevent this, frequently exchanges intelligence information with a number of European governments, including Italy and France. It had a similar, albeit secret, agreement with the United States until Arafat and most of his forces were expelled from Lebanon in the wake of Israel’s 1982 invasion.

Asked whether such an agreement could be renegotiated now, Hassan said that “it didn’t come up” in Friday’s talks but that “there is always the way of cooperation if there is good will.”

Misunderstanding Possible

However, his comments on terrorism also suggested that there may yet be room for misunderstanding between the United States and the PLO on the subject.

Hassan said that the PLO, through Arafat’s statement in Geneva, had “renounced terrorism, full stop.” This meant, he said, that “we have decided to do nothing outside (Israel) and nothing inside against civilians.”

But noting that the PLO is still “in a state of war” with Israel, he drew a distinction between acts of terrorism and what the PLO considers legitimate operations against military targets inside Israel. He did not say whether these would continue to be mounted, but he did not rule them out.

Whether this issue returns to haunt the U.S.-PLO dialogue is one of several imponderables hanging over the still uncertain search for peace in the Middle East. Others include the outcome of Israel’s prolonged crisis over the formation of a new governing coalition and the untested determination of the Bush Administration to assume the mantle of Middle East mediator.

But for the moment at least, the PLO is still riding the crest of its diplomatic success. Building on the worldwide sympathy for the Palestinians generated by the uprising in the occupied territories, the PLO has not only helped to effect a major change in U.S. policy but has also won strong support for an international conference from the West Europeans, as was apparent in speech after speech at the U.N. General Assembly session last week.

Israel, by contrast--still caught in the throes of its government crisis--has fallen behind the diplomatic pace set by the political moderates whose ascendancy within the PLO was confirmed at last month’s meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers.

‘Periodic Watershed’

Such changes, almost unimaginable a year ago, have brought the Middle East to “one of its periodic watersheds,” a Western diplomat said. With Israel diplomatically isolated and the Palestinians finally “speaking for themselves with increasing responsibility, it’s a whole new world out there,” he said.

In Washington, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.), the outgoing Senate Majority Leader, warned Saturday that the United States must press Israel to negotiate with the PLO because “die-hards on both sides will do everything in their power to stop this diplomatic initiative.”

Byrd, delivering the Democrats’ weekly response to President Reagan’s radio address but reflecting bipartisan support in Congress for the Administration’s policy shift, said the PLO’s rejection of terrorism and acceptance of Israel’s right to exist “should be recognized as an opportunity to be seized rather than a threat to Israel’s security and existence.”

He said Arafat “must do everything to suppress” factions in his organization that might seek to subvert the peace process. At the same time, Byrd cautioned, “hard-liners in Israel . . . will have the same aim, to delay, deter and derail the diplomacy of negotiations.”

Byrd said that speaking “as a friend of Israel, it is time to press our friends to move toward real peace.”