Administration Defends Its Dialogue With PLO

The Bush Administration, brushing aside a storm of criticism from Israel and its American supporters, on Friday defended its decision to talk to the deputy chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and vowed to continue the six-month-old U.S.-PLO dialogue.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, has held unannounced meetings recently with a number of PLO officials in addition to Yasser Arafat’s deputy, Salah Khalaf. The department Thursday confirmed the talks with Khalaf after the PLO official told a Kuwaiti newspaper about them.

“In addition to Mr. Khalaf . . . , there were other people that Ambassador Pelletreau has been meeting with over the last several weeks,” Tutwiler said. She refused to reveal other names, but she said there has been no meeting with Arafat.

Not an Upgrading

Although Tutwiler said the contacts should not be considered an upgrading of the U.S.-PLO dialogue, she said they began after Pelletreau was recalled to Washington in April for strategy sessions with Secretary of State James A. Baker III and other officials.

Tutwiler said Washington’s objective in the recent contacts with the PLO has been to persuade the organization to end its opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s proposal for Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to select representatives who would negotiate with Israel over limited Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories.

U.S. officials believe that without at least the tacit approval of the PLO, the elections can never take place because few Palestinians would defy the organization to run or vote. U.S. officials believe it will take months to bring about the elections.

Israeli officials, however, see the election plan as a way to split West Bank and Gaza Palestinians from their allegiance to the PLO. Shamir has made it clear that he will not deal with the PLO, even to advance his own election plan.

Israel and its supporters were especially critical of Pelletreau’s decision to meet Khalaf, also known as Abu Iyad.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington issued a statement saying Khalaf “has been a proponent of the PLO’s adherence to its national charter and has pledged its unwavering support for the use of violence in the armed struggle against Israel.”

Thomas Dine, chairman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said Khalaf “has publicly boasted of his terrorist deeds against Americans and Israelis and bragged about his ability to deceive the United States.”

Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) demanded in a letter Thursday that the Administration end its dialogue with the PLO. Tutwiler said Baker has read Mack’s letter and the answer was “a polite no.”

Wire services reported these other developments:

--The PLO formally asked the United States to restrain Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the organization’s news agency WAFA said.

The PLO made the request in a memorandum delivered to Pelletreau by Hakam Balawi, the PLO representative in Tunis.

WAFA said the memorandum asked the Bush Administration “to take effective measures with regard to Israel’s terrorist acts in the occupied territories and to oppose (these acts).”

--A Syrian-based PLO faction, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that it had suspended talks on handing over the remains of an Israeli soldier in retaliation for Israel’s deportation of eight Palestinians.

The Israeli army said the eight Palestinians dropped off in southern Lebanon on Thursday were leaders of the uprising and members of Fatah, the largest PLO faction, or the Democratic Front.

The soldier, a Druze in the Israeli ground forces, was captured in April, 1983, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The Democratic Front says he was killed in an Israeli air strike.

The front also accused Israel of deliberately killing a Palestinian identified as the kidnaper of a U.S. relief worker abducted last week in the Gaza Strip.

Mohammed Abu Nasr had been identified as leader of a three-man group that abducted Chris George, a 35-year-old co-director of the Jerusalem office of the Save the Children Federation.

The Democratic Front said Nasr did not belong to their faction.