PLO Urges U.N. to Debate Israel Deportations : Diplomacy: Issue threatens resumption of Mideast talks as key Arab states hold back their delegations.

The Palestine Liberation Organization pressed Sunday for a U.N. Security Council debate on Israeli deportations, the politically charged issue that has cast a sudden shadow over this week’s scheduled resumption of Middle East peace talks.

PLO leader Yasser Arafat met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, then flew to Amman for talks with Jordanian officials as key Arab states continued to hold back their delegations to the conference, scheduled to begin Tuesday in Washington.

Arafat’s aides said that the PLO still has not decided whether to authorize Palestinian representatives from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to take part in the third round of peace talks in the face of an Israeli decision last week to deport 12 Palestinians.

The focus of the diplomatic row turned Sunday to the U.N. Security Council, which is expected to debate a resolution on the deportations today. The United States, Russia, Britain, France and other major countries have condemned the decision announced by the Israeli government on Thursday and reaffirmed Sunday by the Cabinet.

The European Community added its voice Sunday, declaring the deportation order illegal but adding an appeal for “the parties concerned to refrain from any measure which would . . . jeopardize the peace process.”

Reports from Tunis, where the PLO headquarters is located, said Arafat had met Saturday night with British Ambassador Stephen Day to call for the U.N. debate. Britain currently holds the presidency of the Security Council.

Washington presumably would support a resolution of condemnation since it has already declared the deportations a violation of international law.

But Arafat, also scheduled to talk with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Damascus, may try to persuade the Arab nations to open the U.N. debate to a wider attack on Israel--perhaps demanding a revocation of the deportation order and seeking greater political mileage out of the dispute.

The Israeli government clearly has no intention of reversing its position. After the Cabinet affirmed the deportation decision Sunday morning, Health Minister Ehud Olmert told a reporter: “Our delegation is leaving tonight, and I hope it will find the Arab delegations in Washington. . . . We all know the world does not like deportations and that there is almost automatic condemnation (but) no, we will not reverse our decision.”

“Whatever is needed to save people’s lives, whatever seems effective to us must be done, and there is no room for argument,” Defense Minister Moshe Arens told Radio Israel.

The expulsions were ordered after the killing of a Jewish settler in the occupied Gaza Strip last week led to widespread demonstrations by armed members of the settlers’ movement.

Unrest continued Sunday with violence by both sides in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Hebron. Several Palestinians were shot and wounded, according to unconfirmed reports, and a pipe bomb reportedly rocked a market in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem but caused no injuries.

The deportation of the 12 Palestinians, described by Israeli authorities as activists in the four-year intifada , would raise to 79 the number expelled from the occupied territories and Israel proper since the uprising began. It was not known precisely when the deportations would take place. They would be the first since last April.

The selection of deportees was not made because any of them had a connection with the shootings of settlers but rather to banish longtime activists who are considered organizers of anti-Israeli resistance in the West Bank and Gaza. The deportees belong to a variety of factions of the PLO as well as to an Islamic nationalist group. Only one of the deportees was identified as having a violent history. He was convicted of killing a fellow Palestinian suspected of being an Israeli informer.

Others were leaders of underground groups indiscriminately characterized as “terror cells” by Israeli authorities. One, who was jailed for 4 1/2 years for belonging to a PLO faction, also had worked in rehabilitation of handicapped patrons of the YMCA in Jerusalem.

All had served anywhere from 10 months to 15 years in jail, and several were imprisoned for between 10 and 36 months without a trial.

While the previous round of the peace talks in Washington last month produced no movement between Israel and its Arab foes--Syria, Lebanon and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation--none of the parties appeared eager to derail the process that began under American and then-Soviet sponsorship last November in Madrid. Even the Palestinian delegation appeared prepared to leave for the United States on Friday when word came from Tunis that the PLO was calling for a delay.

Syria, Jordan and Lebanon supported the strategy, building pressure on the United Nations, if not Israel, to take some sort of action.

Times staff writer Daniel Williams, in Jerusalem, contributed to this story.