Decline in Support, Havens Cuts Palestinian Terrorism

The radical Palestinian group whose hijackings and gruesome bombings first made terrorism a household word in the West has in the past year been virtually shut out of its traditional havens in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, according to Western and Arab intelligence sources.

The Soviet Bloc’s opening to the West and reductions in financing from radical Arab states like Iraq, Syria and Libya have contributed to the apparent breakdown of one of the most infamous Palestinian terrorist organizations. And this has forced others to form alliances in Iran with radical Islamic groups in order to conduct their activities.

The result has been a dramatic decrease in international Palestinian terrorist activities this year and a belief among many analysts that the Arab world--if only because of economic shortfalls, outside pressure and simple expediency--has for the moment discarded state-sponsored terrorism as a principal vehicle for resolving conflict in the Middle East.

“On the whole, the failure of the governments who were known to harbor, aid and abet terrorists has made them shift their policy,” one Arab diplomat said. “Terrorism as a way to resist did not produce any positive results for anyone, and it triggered a reaction against the governments that harbored them.”

An Arab intelligence official said last week there is “confirmed evidence” that Libyan leader Col. Moammar Kadafi has in recent months shut all but three of the hundreds of terrorist training camps that once speckled the Libyan countryside and eliminated funding for two major Palestinian terrorist organizations and a Chadian opposition group.

Also, the official said, Egypt has been notified that notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal has been confined to his residential quarters near Tripoli in response to Egyptian demands.

Although U.S. authorities have been unable to confirm the details, the Libyan move, if true, signals an apparent end to the last major financial support available from Arab governments for organizations like Abu Nidal’s and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

These two groups have been responsible for hundreds of bloody attacks over the past two decades, including the attack on the Achille Lauro cruise ship and, many intelligence officials believe, the bombing last December of a Pan American World Airways 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that left 270 dead.

Also, Israeli and U.S. analysts say there is evidence that East Bloc countries like Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia have ceased--as part of their recent openings to the West--to be used as bases for terrorist training. They also are reportedly no longer supplying safehouses, escape routes and business protection for terrorist organizations like Abu Nidal’s.

“As the world changes so rapidly, particularly in the East Bloc, it’s having a tremendous impact on some of these groups,” said Neil C. Livingston, a Georgetown University professor and consultant on terrorism. “Their world is shrinking very quickly. . . . It’s being constricted to the point that primarily these guys are going to be in banana republics soon.”

Change in Palestinian radicalism in the Middle East has come from the two-year-old uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization, which is directing the uprising, or intifada, announced a year ago that it was renouncing terrorism. And even the hard-line Arab states, which have been suspicious of any negotiations with Israel, are waiting now to see what peace negotiations and the uprising itself will produce, a number of Western diplomats and Arab leaders said.

“The intifada changed the picture and turned the (occupied) territories into the core of the conflict,” said Anat Kurz, a terrorism specialist at Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. “The struggle used to be in Western Europe. Now it’s here, and it’s different both in terms of tactics and in meaning.”

The Jaffee Center, which records incidents of international terrorism, has seen a gradual decline in incidents among Palestinian groups in recent years and a “dramatic decrease” in 1989. It is a trend that Kurz attributes in part to the radical Palestinian groups’ apparent inability to maintain Arab government backing in the face of strong pressure from the Soviet Union and the West.

Just as important, he said, is the decision of several Arab governments to await further political developments before turning again to terrorism.

“From the changing of the world situation, everybody is recalculating their situations--even the Israelis. Everybody,” said a senior Egyptian official who has monitored the drop-off in support for radical Palestinian groups.

While Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak successfully lobbied Kadafi into reining in Abu Nidal as a condition for better relations with Egypt, Cairo has not drawn down its military guard against Libya, the official said.

“Egypt keeps the same military position as the last six years. We have not changed even one soldier,” he said. “We are watching. We know through our experience with him (Kadafi), he is not a stable man. He can change his position from not one day, from one moment to another.”

Indeed, a number of analysts caution that the apparent hiatus in major Palestinian terrorist activity could be a temporary phenomenon.

Iraq, which is believed to have largely halted its support of terrorist groups when its coffers were drained by the war with Iran, could resume its support after the economy recovers sufficiently, some analysts said. Likewise, they said, Palestinian radicalism could be reignited by the peace process itself in reaction to any Palestinian decision to actually negotiate face to face with Israel.

In any case, groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command are maintaining strong presences in Lebanon--with Syria’s apparent acquiescence--and have recently established new offices in Tehran, according to Western intelligence sources.

The front’s leader, Ahmed Jibril, has reportedly bragged about receiving a substantial payment from Iran for bringing down the Pan Am 747 over Lockerbie. Although the bombing has not been officially attributed to any group, many intelligence officials believe that the front carried it out at the request of the Iranians, who were seeking vengeance for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the U.S. cruiser Vincennes. Estimates of the purported payment have ranged from $1.3 million to $10 million.

Libya had been paying Jibril’s organization about $20 million a year, according to Western terrorism analysts, and U.S. officials are still not firmly convinced that Kadafi has genuinely given up all financial aid.

“We have reports that the groups are complaining,” said one counterterrorism official. “They are not getting as much money, or they have not received money promised for a long while. But we can’t confirm it.”

A variety of European diplomats in Tripoli, however, said in recent interviews that Kadafi in the past several months notified a variety of terrorist groups of a cutoff in funding, and Arab military officials say Abu Nidal has been detained at his residence for nearly two months.

An Arab military source said several of Abu Nidal’s lieutenants have sought permission in recent weeks to leave Tripoli and go to Lebanon, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.

But Galia Golan, an Israeli authority on Soviet support to the Palestinian movement, said a lucrative business venture by the Abu Nidal organization was closed in Poland about a year and a half ago, at the same time the group was being pushed out of Syria--or at least forced further underground. And other East Bloc countries are not likely to be as receptive as in the past, she said.

“There would appear to be a change in the Soviet attitude toward terrorism,” especially in terms of increased cooperation with Western intelligence, she said. There also have been “indications” of reductions in training and supplies to terrorist organizations, as well as some evidence that safehouses and escape routes are being cut off, she added.

“When they lose that, I think they will be in trouble. The fact that they’re losing this kind of logistical assistance is going to be important,” Golan said.

Some analysts predict that, in addition to Iran, some of the guerrilla and terrorist organizations nurtured under the Palestinian flag will begin moving increasingly toward Third World dictators far removed from the Middle East as a new source of support.

“They can blend into the Third World and find a corrupt regime or two that will give them what they need,” Georgetown’s Livingston suggested. “These guys aren’t going to spend a lot of time in the temperate zones in the future. They will be relegated more and more toward the Equator. That means certain African states, Saharan states, Latin American states, maybe Romania for the time being, at least.”

Kurz, of the Jaffee Center, said there is the possibility that the Soviet Union’s recent overtures to the West and its apparent pressure on its allies to cut back support for terrorism could reflect, in the longer run, the view that the Middle East is no longer the powder keg where a global superpower showdown is likely to erupt.

“The superpowers have just been disassociating themselves from these conflicts . . . and I’m afraid we’ll some day soon feel left behind,” Kurz conceded. “If the Middle East is less a potential source of global explosion, who should be interested in several million people who have been fighting between themselves for decades?”

Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this story from Washington.