U.S. to Meet With PLO to Clarify Statement by Fatah

The United States has asked for another round of talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization to discuss a controversial new political statement by the PLO mainstream Fatah group, the State Department said Saturday.

The talks are expected to take place soon, Anita Stockman, a department spokeswoman said, without giving a specific date.

Earlier, in Tunis, Khaled Hassan, a leading Fatah member and senior adviser to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, said the fourth round of full U.S.-PLO talks will probably be held in the next few days, possibly Monday. He said the United States has put the request to the PLO’s ambassador to Tunisia, Hakam Balawi, who accepted immediately.

Stockman said the United States will ask the PLO to clarify a new Fatah political program that the State Department has characterized as unhelpful.

The PLO-U.S. dialogue opened last December after Arafat renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist, meeting conditions set by Washington for the start of talks.

Yet the new Fatah program, publicly announced at the group’s congress in Tunis on Tuesday, called for “intensifying and escalating armed action and all forms of struggle to eliminate the Zionist Israeli occupation of our occupied Palestinian land.”

Israel immediately described the program as a step backward and a sign Fatah was committed to the destruction of Israel.

On Friday Fatah issued a second political statement that was less strongly worded than the original program. In it, Fatah reserved the Palestinian people’s right to armed struggle but did not say they planned to escalate it.

Israel, however, showed no joy Saturday at this milder tone.

“Its completely meaningless,” said Avi Pazner, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, calling the new statement “damage control.”