Guerrilla Attacks Threaten Dialogue, Baker Tells PLO

Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Saturday that the United States has decided to continue its dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization but that Washington has warned the PLO that guerrilla attacks against Israeli targets could change that stance.

“These are actions that present us with great difficulty,” Baker said, referring to an apparent attempt by five PLO guerrillas to infiltrate Israel last weekend.

“We are not prepared at this time to say that this constitutes action by the PLO that would cause us to break off the dialogue,” he said.

But in a message delivered to the PLO by the U.S. envoy in Tunisia last week, he said, “We made the point that actions such as this, directed at military or civilian targets inside or outside Israel, were something that gave us trouble.”

The five guerrillas, four Palestinians and one Lebanese, were intercepted and killed by Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, a few miles from Israel’s northern border. Israeli officials said the guerrillas carried documents showing that they were associated with two factions of the PLO.

The Jerusalem government also charged that the guerrillas intended to attack a target inside Israel, partly because they carried grenades and wire-cutters--presumably for breaching the security fence along the border.

When the Reagan Administration opened official diplomatic contacts with the PLO in December, it did so on condition that the organization renounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Last week, after the guerrillas were intercepted, Israel formally demanded that the Bush Administration break off its relations with the PLO on the grounds that the Palestinians had violated its terms by attempting an act of terrorism.

Baker carefully sidestepped the question of whether the guerrillas’ presence in the Israeli-controlled sector of southern Lebanon constituted terrorism.

But he also made explicit a new, broad definition of the kind of operations that would put the U.S.-PLO dialogue in danger: not only attacks against civilians inside Israel, but raids against Israeli military units inside Lebanon as well.