2 PLO Radicals Join in Threat to ‘Strike U.S. Interests’ : Jordan: Action is urged if GIs attack Iraq. King Hussein meets the pair, who have long backed terrorism.

Jordan’s King Hussein met with two old rivals from the Palestine Liberation Organization shortly before they joined other pro-Iraqi groups Monday in a call to “strike American interests everywhere” if U.S. troops attack Iraq.

Hussein met with George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh, who head Marxist factions of the PLO and have a long history of supporting international terrorism. The Jordanian government announced the meeting Monday and said it took place late Sunday.

Habash and Hawatmeh were expelled from Jordan 20 years ago when King Hussein ordered his army to clear PLO militias from his country on grounds that they were preparing to overthrow him.

The meeting with Hussein, which was not reported by the Jordanian press, reflects the lengths to which the Jordanian monarch has gone to keep up with public sentiment in favor of Iraq in the Persian Gulf crisis.

Habash and Hawatmeh took center stage at the three-day Conference of Arab Popular Movements, which issued a statement calling for attacks against American interests.

The statement also expressed support for the holy war proposed by Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein and appealed for Arabs to unite in an effort to break the embargo on trade with Iraq.

The delegates, representing political parties, guerrilla groups and labor unions, said they will challenge the embargo by shipping food and medicine to Iraq by sea.

In order to plan the “strike against American interests everywhere and by all means at the same moment an American military attack is launched against Iraq,” the delegates agreed to establish a permanent committee with headquarters in Jordan.

In the Middle East, the term “strike against” is often used as a synonym for terror. Such a call, issued in King Hussein’s capital, is likely to further erode his reputation in the West as a moderate. He is already viewed with displeasure in some Western capitals because of his early support for Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

King Hussein has since tried to present himself as a neutral broker between Iraq’s President Hussein and the rest of the world, but his diplomatic effort has accomplished virtually nothing, despite personal visits to capitals in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

Since returning to Jordan 12 days ago, the king has stayed largely out of public view and has resigned himself to staying on the sidelines while events take their course, officials say.

In his diplomatic travels, King Hussein sought to promote an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait in exchange for a U.S. withdrawal from Saudi Arabia. He is said to have been received coldly in Iraq, the last stop on his trip.

Iraq contends that it has a historic right to Kuwait, but Washington and most of the rest of the international community are insisting on the unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi troops and restoration of the deposed royal family in Kuwait.

King Hussein’s present attitude is in sharp contrast to his earlier energetic promotion of an “Arab solution” to the conflict. A senior Jordanian official, asked to comment on this, replied: “What can the king tell the people? Things have got out of hand.”

A former Jordanian official said: “I would say that the king will now sit back and wait. There is not much that can be done given the positions of both sides.”

The PLO has supported Iraq in hopes that the crisis over Kuwait will have a positive effect on the Palestinian desire for an independent Palestinian state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. At least half of Jordan’s 3 million people consider themselves Palestinians.

It was Palestinian support for Iraq that led King Hussein to permit Habash and Hawatmeh to return to this country, if only for the three days of the conference. And the visiting Palestinians have been careful not to tread on Jordanian sensibilities.

“Mistakes will not recur,” said Hawatmeh, who heads the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small PLO faction.

Habash heads the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Both groups regard terror as a key weapon in battling Israel.

Palestinians commemorate the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan as Black September. The banishment was a step in a PLO odyssey that took it to Lebanon and then, after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, to countries scattered across the Arab world. Recently it has found a welcome home in Iraq.

In the past year, Jordan has given space to an array of PLO factions to carry on political activity. The opening followed food riots that shook the regime and prompted King Hussein to try to broaden his popular support.

But democratization, his advisers told him, is one thing and a PLO presence led by old enemies of the regime is another. They insisted that neither Hawatmeh nor Habash be permitted to take up residence in Jordan.

Across the Jordan River in Israel, officials have watched the budding PLO presence in Amman with suspicion. Some Israeli politicians have blamed occasional border incidents involving Jordanian soldiers on the king’s new tolerance.

Israeli officials have also warned that King Hussein’s rule is being made unstable by the Palestinian rush to support Iraq.