PLO Official Distances Self From Arafat Declaration

A member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization was quoted Monday as having dismissed PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s statements renouncing terrorism as an expression of Arafat’s personal opinion.

The statement was made by Mustafa Zabri, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a hard-line Marxist group based in Damascus, Syria. Zabri is one of 15 members of the PLO’s Executive Committee, which is responsible for running the organization.

According to news agency accounts, Zabri issued a statement in which he said Arafat’s statement last week at a news conference in Geneva renouncing terrorism was “incompatible with the resolutions of the latest Palestine National Council meeting,” which was held in Algiers in November.

The council is the Palestinians’ so-called parliament-in-exile and decides policy for the PLO, which is an umbrella group composed of diverse Palestinian organizations and guerrilla groups.

At the November meeting, the council declared an independent state, presumably in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and called for a peace settlement based on U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which implicitly recognizes Israel’s right to exist within secure boundaries.

The PFLP, which is headed by George Habash, strongly opposed the acceptance of Resolution 242, but Habash went along when he was overruled by a majority vote.

Habash, who is currently in Damascus, did not take part in Zabri’s statement to the press, according to PFLP officials reached in Damascus by The Times.

Last week, Arafat appeared before a news conference in Geneva, where he had addressed the U.N. General Assembly the day before, and explicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist along with the newly declared Palestinian state. He also renounced terrorism in all forms.

First Round of Talks

The statement led the U.S. government to drop its ban on official contacts with the PLO, and a first round of talks was held Friday in Tunisia between PLO officials and the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, Robert H. Pelletreau Jr.

Arafat’s press conference statement went considerably beyond the position stated at the PNC meeting in November. Zabri said the PLO leader’s remarks about terrorism were “Arafat’s personal opinion.”

It was unclear whether the Zabri statement constituted a rejection of the Arafat statement on terrorism.

Arafat was embroiled in controversy Monday over the question of whether his rejection of terrorism included attacks on Israeli military targets by Palestinian guerrillas.

The PLO leader is touring European countries to drum up support for an international Mideast peace conference and an independent Palestine. As he arrived in Vienna, he was asked by reporters whether the PLO would continue armed attacks against Israeli authorities.

“You mean resistance. Our people will definitely continue their intifada, “ Arafat was quoted as saying, using the Arabic word for the yearlong Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In the occupied territories, meanwhile, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy died Monday from head injuries that his family said he suffered when he was pushed from a military jeep in the West Bank, the Associated Press reported from Jerusalem.

An army spokesman confirmed that the boy died but said a preliminary investigation had found nothing to connect the army to the death.

In other violence, troops shot and wounded nine Palestinians in clashes in the Gaza Strip, Arab hospital officials said.

Arafat’s remarks followed by a day statements from the deputy leader of Arafat’s Fatah faction, Abu Iyad, who said that PLO attacks against Israeli military targets were unaffected by the Arafat statement on terrorism.

“Reagan may stop his government’s dialogue with the PLO now if he thinks he will be able to stop our attacks against Israeli military targets,” Abu Iyad was quoted as saying in Abu Dhabi.

In abandoning the 13-year-old prohibition on contacts with the PLO, the Reagan Administration said the PLO would be carefully watched to make sure that its deeds matched its words.

But it did not clarify whether the discussions would be broken off if Israeli military targets are attacked. The PLO regards these attacks as acts of national liberation permitted by the U.N. charter.