U.S., PLO Confer on U.N. Role in West Bank, Gaza

U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, acting as U.N. Security Council president this month, met a PLO envoy Monday night to discuss the group’s call for U.N. observers to protect Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It was the first reported contact between the United States and the Palestine Liberation Organization since the U.S. government broke off dialogue with the PLO after an attack by a radical PLO faction on an Israeli beach in May.

Later, both sides said the session was businesslike, related only to Security Council business on the occupied territories. They said there was no hint of resuming the U.S.-PLO dialogue.

Pickering said nonaligned nations formally requested an urgent meeting of the 15-member Security Council to discuss the latest violence in the Gaza Strip.

No meeting was set. The PLO said it hopes there will be a meeting today or Wednesday at the latest.

Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Jordan, met the PLO’s acting permanent observer, Nasser Kidwa, for half an hour.

Kidwa said the Gaza situation “is outright madness against Palestinians by Israeli authorities. . . . We want discussion of how to protect the Palestinian people.”

Earlier Monday, the PLO proposed a resolution asking the Security Council to send unarmed U.N. observers to protect Palestinians in the territories.

Israel rejects observers as a violation of its sovereignty over the territories it captured in 1967. Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar has called for a meeting of 164 nations to discuss protection of Palestinians. Israel has also rejected this proposal.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip remained under curfew Monday, confining 150,000 Palestinians to their homes, after a weekend of rioting sparked by the death of a jailed Arab activist. More than 180 Palestinians were reported wounded in two days of violence.

In fighting Monday in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, Palestinian gunmen fired from a vacant U.N building at an Israeli army patrol, a U.N. spokeswoman said. No one was hurt in the attack.