Deadline Looming, PLO Scrambles to Fill Key Posts : Mideast: Central Council approves peace pact with Israel after tense debate erupts into a brawl.

As the deadline loomed for implementing a peace agreement with Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization moved into crisis mode Monday, scrambling to fill positions for an interim Palestinian government, rounding up bodyguards suspected of brewing assassination plots and arguing within its own leadership over the wisdom of making peace.

Two days before talks were scheduled to open in Cairo to implement the “Gaza-Jericho first” peace plan, the PLO Central Council was engaged in a tense debate that, at one point, erupted into a brawl that had to be broken up by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

But the council finally approved the plan on a 63-8 vote shortly before midnight, with 12 members abstaining or absent.

Meanwhile, Tunisian authorities arrested nine bodyguards for Arafat and for other key PLO leaders after several of them were overheard bitterly accusing the PLO chairman of “treason,” a senior PLO source said, adding, “They were talking about assassinations.”

The source said the detainees included guards for Arafat and for Yasser Abed-Rabbo, PLO information department chief; Mahmoud Abbas, architect of the landmark peace agreement with Israel, and Ahmed Suleiman Khoury, who conducted the secret peace talks that produced the agreement.

“But, basically,” the source said, “all the people who were arrested were arrested for talking, nothing more. The Tunisians can’t afford to have anything happen on their soil.”

Only two years ago, Abu Iyad, Arafat’s second in command, was murdered, along with two other PLO aides, by a bodyguard who was believed to be linked to the radical Abu Nidal organization, which for years has been a bloody opponent of Arafat and his moderate Fatah faction.

The arrests come at a time when the PLO has shown itself unable to control even internal opposition to the peace agreement.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--a Damascus, Syria-based PLO faction that is boycotting this week’s Central Council meeting in Tunis--has claimed responsibility for an attack earlier this week in which two Israeli hikers were killed in the occupied West Bank near Jericho. The faction said in a statement that it “will continue its struggle on all fronts to foil the Gaza-Jericho accord . . . until our peoples’ aims of self-determination and an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital are fulfilled.”

The attack raises questions about whether the PLO will be able to control not only the Islamic militant group Hamas--which opposes the peace agreement and is not part of the PLO--but also violent opponents from within its own organization.

In Tunis, PLO spokesman Bassam abu Sharif said neither side, after more than four decades of conflict, should expect an immediate end to violence in the occupied territories. “If you want my opinion, I think we should not have illusions. We should expect such operations from both sides,” he said.

Yossi Beilin, the Israeli deputy foreign minister who made a landmark visit to the Tunisian capital on Monday, concurred, noting: “The biggest mistake on our side would be, of course, to say: ‘What did we gain? Nothing, actually. We made an agreement to put an end to terrorism, and here it goes on.’ Because we know that eventually terrorism can flourish only when there is wide public support for such activities.”

Beilin said he believed the peace process now under way could even survive Arafat’s assassination, though he emphasized that he hoped no ill will befall the PLO leader. “Eventually, you are signing the agreement between people . . . and all of us are mortal. . . . We hope that the agreements are stronger than the people who signed them.”

But Arafat still faces an uphill road within his own organization to sell the peace plan, under which Palestinians would gain full autonomy within the next two months in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho and limited self-rule in the rest of the West Bank.

More than 80 members of the 107-member Central Council convened Sunday night and on through Monday as Arafat sought broad support for a peace plan that many opponents still fear will not lead to the Palestinians’ dream of an independent state. Opponents, including Abul Abbas, who was thrown off the PLO executive committee after leading an ill-fated terrorist raid on an Israeli beach near Tel Aviv a few years ago, argued vociferously against the peace agreement and accused Arafat of ramming it through the organization like a dictator.

The debate grew so heated Sunday night that a brawl broke out between representatives of the Baathist Palestine Liberation Front and people from inside the occupied territories, forcing Arafat to step in and break it up, PLO sources said.

Arafat himself, standing with his top lieutenants to defend the peace plan--signed during his groundbreaking Sept. 13 trip to Washington--emphasized that no agreement would have been possible without compromise.

Equally difficult has been the process of gearing up for the implementation talks. The PLO, at the last minute, is trying to name members of two negotiating committees and to debate the makeup of the transitional government that will rule in Gaza and Jericho once Israeli forces begin withdrawing in mid-December.

PLO sources originally indicated that its de facto foreign minister, Farouk Kaddoumi, who had opposed the peace agreement, would lead the Palestinian part of the liaison committee, which will begin meeting in Cairo. But later Monday it was decided that Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Maazen, will head the talks.