European Community Holds 1st Formal Meeting With Arafat

Officials of the European Community held their first formal talks with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat on Friday and said they will try to speed up the convening of an international peace conference aimed at ending the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“There is support in the European Community to speed up as far as possible the calling of a peace conference,” Spanish Foreign Minister Francisco Fernandez Ordonez said after he and his French and Greek colleagues concluded a meeting that lasted several hours with the Palestine Liberation Organization’s leader.

Arafat described as “important, positive and constructive” his talks with the three foreign ministers who are spearheading the European Community peace initiative.

Dialogue With Washington

The initiative was launched last month after the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist and opened a dialogue with the United States.

“Europe can play a fundamental role in solving the Middle East conflict,” Arafat told a news conference in a Madrid hotel. But he said he could not tell European countries what to do.

“I am asking them to help,” he said.

Arafat, eager to promote his new image as a peacemaker, also held lengthy talks with Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and was received by King Juan Carlos I. The king refused to see the PLO leader when he first visited Madrid 10 years ago.

Fernandez Ordonez said recent events in the Middle East had raised hopes for peace.

“Nineteen eighty-nine can be the year of the beginning of peace,” he told the news conference.

He said interesting new ideas were floated at the meeting, but he gave no details and no concrete steps emerged.

Fernandez Ordonez said that no timetable or committees were set up to prepare for a conference and that there was no consensus in the European Community on Arafat’s informal request for recognition of the independent Palestinian state.

None of the 12 European Community members has recognized the state proclaimed last year in Tunis by the Palestine National Council, the so-called Palestinian parliament-in-exile.