Rifts Reported Among Radical PLO Leaders

Radical Palestinian leader George Habash has split with his longtime Syrian backers and is now in Iraq, marking a major shift within the PLO triggered by the Persian Gulf crisis, informed sources reported Sunday.

They also reported that another radical, Nayef Hawatmeh, is struggling to retain control of his group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, after a mutiny sparked by his support for Syria’s anti-Iraq stand in the month-old crisis.

The developments underlined the shock waves striking within the Palestine Liberation Organization caused by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2.

PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, qualified by a condemnation of the occupation of the gulf kingdom, has alienated the organization from the Arab mainstream that has opposed Hussein’s action.

That has cut Arafat off from the financial support of Saudi Arabia and other pro-Western gulf states, while at the same time firing up the PLO’s radicals, like Habash and Hawatmeh.

They reluctantly went along with Arafat’s 1988 peace initiative, in which he renounced terrorism and recognized Israel. They have long argued that only military struggle will achieve a Palestinian homeland.

Saddam Hussein has demanded an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in any settlement of the gulf crisis.

Habash, 64, heads the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the second-largest faction in the PLO after Arafat’s Fatah movement.

His new alliance with Hussein marks an increasing tilt by PLO radicals toward Baghdad amid growing fears that Palestinian militants and other Arab groups will launch terrorist attacks on U.S., Western and Arab targets to support Iraq.

Hawatmeh, 54, has said that he cannot back the Iraqis, who he says have done to Kuwait what the Israelis did to Palestine. But the Democratic Front’s deputy secretary general, Yasser Abed-Rabbo, flew to Baghdad with Arafat last week, cementing the split from Hawatmeh’s leadership.

Hussein already harbors the radical Palestine Liberation Front, a PLO faction led by Mohammed Abbas, known as Abul Abbas. That group hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 and was behind an abortive seaborne raid on Israel last May.

That operation led President Bush to suspend an 18-month dialogue with the PLO.

The official Iraqi News Agency said in a terse dispatch that Hussein met with Habash on Sunday on the crisis.