Carter Meets With Arafat : Their Paris Session Stirs Controversy

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and former President Jimmy Carter met today in an effort to break the stalemate in the Middle East peace process. The meeting outraged Israel and many French Jews.

In a surprise development, French President Francois Mitterrand injected himself into the unprecedented session and met the two before their bilateral talks for an update “on the prospects for peace in the Middle East,” the Elysee Palace said.

Israel reacted to the meeting with alarm. Government officials said they had not been informed of the Paris talks either by Carter or by the Bush Administration.

“Anything that gives credit to Arafat only strengthens his belief that he can go on with an extremist attitude,” said Yosef Amihud, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv.

Carter and Arafat arrived separately at the Elysee Palace for the talks shortly after 8 p.m.

Foreign Minister Roland Dumas told reporters before the meeting that the three-way session “could be useful and happy” and that France hopes “to unblock the Middle East peace process.”

Originally the meeting was to involve only Arafat and Carter, but Mitterrand announced that he was taking part in the unprecedented meeting shortly after the arrival of the two leaders in the French capital.

Police stepped up security at Orly Airport for Arafat, who landed aboard a special Iraqi executive jet shortly after 4 p.m. More than 200 gendarmes and anti-explosives experts ringed the airport’s Honor Pavilion, normally reserved for heads of state, where French officials met Arafat for security reasons.

Carter arrived from Brussels, Belgium, a short time later.

Diplomatic sources said Carter, architect of the 1978 Camp David peace accords and the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, unofficially is acting as an emissary of Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who is anxious to crank up talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

A Jewish group, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, protested the Carter-Arafat meeting, saying it “has demanded to be received by Jimmy Carter to obtain clarifications” about why he agreed to meet Arafat.

“Arafat demonstrates today to France and our fellow citizens that he only presents a facade of being a messenger of peace and conciliation. In reality he remains partisan of a murderous conflict,” the group claimed in a statement.

Mitterrand last May became the first major Western leader to officially receive Arafat, and at that time French Jews were also deeply offended.

Last month, Carter made a private tour of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Israel and denounced human rights violations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. Carter criticized Israel last month for its methods of suppressing the 2-year-old Palestinian uprising and called for an international peace conference.

Carter, who mediated an Israeli-Egyptian treaty excluding Arafat from the peace process, said during his visit to Jerusalem last month that he saw a major role for the PLO in the search for peace.

Carter was to have met Arafat in Tunis last month but canceled the trip when the PLO leader went to Namibia to attend independence celebrations.