Arafat Seeks U.N. Force to Aid Arabs in W. Bank, Gaza

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat urged the U.N. Security Council on Friday to send an emergency force to protect Arabs in the Israeli-occupied territories from a “war of extermination.”

Opening an emergency council session, Arafat called for an end to Israel’s 23-year-old occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a ban on Jewish settlements in the territories and international sanctions against Israel.

The violence “has reached an extremely dangerous and explosive point,” the Palestine Liberation Organization chief said. “The situation now requires urgent action in order to enforce reverence for international legitimacy.”

But Israel dismissed any U.N. monitoring of the West Bank and Gaza following an upsurge of violence triggered by an Israeli gunman who killed seven Palestinian laborers last Sunday.

“It requires the consent of all parties, and we will not give that consent,” Israel’s delegate, Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said shortly before the council session began.

“What we are now facing is a further attempt to delegitimize Israel and Jewish immigration to it,” he told the council.

Arafat, speaking for nearly an hour, did not say what sort of civilian or military force he proposed.

Arafat urged appointment of a permanent U.N. envoy to monitor the situation and immediate preparations for an international Middle East peace conference.

Initial responses from other delegates were largely noncommittal. In Israel, a top aide to caretaker Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Arafat’s speech was “full of lies and distortions.”

Secretary of State James A. Baker III reiterated in Washington the United States’ opposition to stationing a U.N. observer force in the territories but said the “idea of the secretary general sending one of his top aides to take a look at the situation and return is something quite different.” Asked to appraise Arafat’s speech, Baker said he had not read it.