Arafat’s Plane Missing in Libyan Sandstorm : Mideast: The PLO leader was on a flight from Sudan. U.S., other nations are urged to assist search.

A plane carrying Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat was reported missing Tuesday night in bad weather over a remote area of the Libyan desert, according to the official Libyan news agency and PLO sources.

Details of the plane’s disappearance were not immediately available, but the Libyan news agency Jana reported that the plane vanished 45 miles from the southeastern Libyan town of Sarra.

PLO sources in Arafat’s office in Tunis, Tunisia, confirmed to the Associated Press that the plane had disappeared in a severe sandstorm, but offered few details.

“We’re trying to find him now,” said Bassam abu Sharif, Arafat’s chief adviser, speaking seven hours after the plane had disappeared. He appealed to the United States, France, Italy, Britain and Egypt “to help with all possible means to locate the aircraft.”

The British news agency Reuters, quoting sources in the Tunis office, said senior PLO officials were anxiously trying to establish Arafat’s fate and were in “crisis session.”

If the 62-year-old Arafat has been killed in a crash, the PLO would be left in a perilous state. Ranking members of the organization’s executive committee and the Palestine National Council presumably would convene to choose a successor. No one has been designated by Arafat, who has commanded the fractious organization for more than two decades.

A PLO official in Cairo said that Arafat had been in neighboring Sudan and was expected to visit a Palestinian guerrilla camp at Sarra, 870 miles southeast of Tripoli, the Libyan capital. The British Broadcasting Corp. said Arafat was returning to Tunis after a 24-hour visit to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

The PLO official said the pilot of the plane made an unsuccessful landing attempt at the Sarra airport before telling the control tower that he would try a forced landing in the nearby desert, Reuters news agency was told. A Libyan Communications and Transport Ministry spokesman told the news agency that visibility in the area was down to about 300 yards.

“Whether they landed safely or not, we do not know yet,” the PLO official said. “The weather was terrible.”

A State Department official said the department was monitoring the situation but knew nothing beyond news reports. President Bush, returning to the White House from a concert Tuesday night, was asked if he had any news about Arafat and said, “I haven’t heard a word since that original story.”

Libyan civil aviation officials made appeals early today to the International Red Cross and operators of international satellites and weather stations for assistance in locating the plane, according to Libyan news reports.

Palestinian sources in Tripoli told the AP that Libyan rescue planes were searching for Arafat’s plane, and airport sources in Aswan, Egypt, told Reuters that four Egyptian military planes were scheduled to join the search at dawn.

The Libyan news agency said radar contact with the aircraft, described by the PLO in Tunis as a Soviet-made, Algerian-registered Antonov transport plane, was lost at 8:45 p.m. local time (11:45 a.m. PDT). The plane disappeared over the Kufrah oasis, 70 miles northeast of Sarra, said Libya’s Voice of the Greater Arab Homeland, quoting Jana, the Libyan news agency.

It was not known who was traveling with Arafat, who is both chairman of the PLO and president of the self-proclaimed state of Palestine. The PLO in Tunis reported that 12 people were aboard, including three crew members and a team of bodyguards and administrative assistants.

Sources at Arafat’s office in Tunis refused to speculate as to what might have happened to the plane.

One source, contacted by the AP from Nicosia, Cyprus, said the plane was scheduled to land at an airstrip at Kufrah, near the Egyptian border, at about 8:45 p.m.

Contact with the plane was lost “a few minutes before then,” the source said, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The oasis lies about 150 miles northwest of the Sudanese border and 900 miles southeast of Tripoli.

Other PLO sources, quoting Libyan authorities, said contact with the plane was lost during a sandstorm, but that the plane may well have “landed safely” in the desert, the AP reported.

The Algerian pilot of Arafat’s plane, Mohammed Darwish, twice contacted Libyan air traffic controllers around 8:30 p.m. complaining of a heavy sandstorm and seeking clearance to land at a military air strip at Kufrah, PLO sources told the AP in Tunis.

The pilot was instructed instead to proceed to Sarra, where weather conditions were slightly better, the AP said. In his last communication with air traffic controllers, the pilot said he was headed for Sarra.

It was unclear whether the plane had a scheduled stop in Libya Tuesday night or if the attempted landing was an emergency. The PLO sources told the AP that Arafat often stopped to refuel at Kufrah when flying from Khartoum to Tunis.

Arafat, who has led the PLO since 1969, has been the embodiment of the organization, with his trademark checkered head scarf, military uniform and unshaven grin recognizable across the world.

His office is in Tunis, but he virtually lives on an airplane--until recently, an aircraft on loan from the Iraqi government. He travels in near-complete secrecy, even while visiting allies, with the announcement of his arrival coming only at the last minute.

Arafat regularly visits Palestinian guerrilla camps around the time of the Muslim festival of Eid al Fitr, which just ended. The Palestinian fighters scattered to several Middle Eastern and North African countries after being forced out of Lebanon by the Israeli invasion of 1982 and by Palestinian factional fighting in northern Lebanon the following year.

Having made enemies in Israel and within his own movement, Arafat lives in fear of assassination at the hands of the Israelis or radical Palestinian opponents. Before he arrives in any country, he reloads his Smith & Wesson revolver, and his plane is usually brimming with weapons, sometimes even stashed in the lavatory.

The leadership core that has been with Arafat since the 1960s has been devastated by assassinations in the past few years. Many Middle East analysts believe that the new Palestinian leaders, including Arafat’s successor, will come from the Israeli-occupied territories, not from the countries of the Palestinian diaspora that provided the original command for the PLO.

Whether a political leadership from the West Bank and Gaza Strip would retain the PLO structure is unclear. Arafat has authority over both political and military realms for the Palestinians, but a number of nominally PLO guerrilla wings have stood in open defiance to the longtime chairman and operate under the protection of Syria, Iraq and other Arab governments.

Despite the ongoing Middle East peace talks that seek to find some solution to the Palestinian problem, Arafat’s personal fortunes have never been at a lower ebb. Recently, he has found himself under siege by radicals seeking to undermine the peace process and moderates who say he has outlived his time.

The PLO took a tremendous financial beating--suffering losses of $100 million a year from its Persian Gulf benefactors--for Arafat’s outspoken support of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.

Times staff writer Nick B. Williams Jr. contributed to this article.

Profile: Yasser Arafat

Born: Aug. 29, 1929

Birthplace: Cairo

Education: Trained as civil engineer at Cairo University

Personal: At 62, he reportedly married his secretary, 28, last November.

Career:

1949: Forms Palestinian Students League after moving back to Cairo.

1956: Serves as a demolitions expert with the Egyptian army during the Suez War.

1959: Forms the Palestine Liberation Movement, known by its Arabic initials, in reverse order, as FTH, pronounced “FA-tah,” Arabic for “conquest.”

1964: Begins guerrilla attacks against Israel.

1969: Becomes executive chairman of Palestine Liberation Organization.

1970: Driven out of Jordan with the PLO after a series of airline hijackings. PLO sets up headquarters in Lebanon.

1974: Addresses U.N. General Assembly and declares: “Today, I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

1975-76: Sides with the Muslims against the Christians in the civil war in Lebanon.

1982: Evacuates Beirut with the PLO.

1983: Expelled from Syria in split with President Hafez Assad. His forces are also driven from last toehold in Lebanon.

1985: Narrowly escapes death in Israeli air raid on PLO headquarters in Tunis in retaliation for slaying of three Israelis on Cyprus by PLO gunmen.

1986: Fed up with Arafat’s rigid stance on peace talks, King Hussein severs links with PLO.

1988: Arafat accepts Israel’s right to exist and renounces terrorism.

1990: Iraq invades Kuwait and Arafat supports Saddam Hussein, resulting in PLO’s isolation and weakening of its diplomatic position.