Clinton, Rabin Demand Arafat Condemn Attacks : Mideast: PLO leader is ‘duty-bound’ by peace pact to renounce recent violence, President says. U.S. also pushes Arab nations to lift trade boycott against Israel.

President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Friday demanded that Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat condemn recent Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, saying that he has a “duty” to do so under the terms of September’s peace agreement.

As Clinton sought to reassure Israelis that they can pursue peace while remaining secure, he also repeated his call for Arab states to lift the trade boycott against Israel. Clinton’s remarks came after he and Rabin met at the White House.

The President referred to the boycott as a “relic” and suggested that some Arab countries have stopped enforcing it while officially maintaining it.

Rabin also announced that Clinton has decided to allow Israel to buy advanced supercomputers, which had been barred by U.S. export controls, and F-15E fighter-bombers.

The statement drew a raised eyebrow and a quizzical look from Clinton. U.S. officials had intended to make the announcement Monday, when Rabin is scheduled to meet with Defense Secretary Les Aspin.

An Administration official said the changes in the computer-export rules will parallel changes announced earlier this fall to allow sales of high-speed computers to former Communist states in Eastern Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union. Such computers had been kept from Israel because they can be used for ballistic missile technology.

Clinton and Rabin also hinted broadly--as have other Israeli and U.S. officials in recent days--that Israel and Jordan have made progress in peace talks. But Clinton said he did not expect an announcement of an Israeli-Jordanian agreement during Rabin’s stay.

“Hussein obviously wants peace, and the recent elections must surely encourage him,” Clinton said, referring to Jordan’s king and the sharp setback that Jordanian voters dealt Monday to Islamic fundamentalists, foes of the peace accord who had dominated Jordan’s Parliament for the last four years.

“Nothing would please me more” than to host another peace ceremony, he added, “but I think not on this visit.”

But a press conference that followed the two leaders’ 90-minute meeting in the Oval Office was dominated by their efforts to prod Arafat into a clear denunciation of the most recent terrorist attacks against Israelis--particularly the Oct. 29 killing of West Bank settler Haim Mizrahi by five Palestinians who subsequently identified themselves as members of Fatah, Arafat’s own faction of the PLO.

“Leaders who seek peace must speak out in a loud and clear voice against those who would destroy those aspirations for peace,” Clinton said. “Chairman Arafat now, under the terms of the agreement, is duty-bound at a minimum to condemn” the recent attack.

In Israel, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israel Television that he had spoken with Arafat in the morning and that the PLO leader “repeated to me that explicit orders had been given to all his people to refrain from any violent operation.”

“I requested that he publicly state how he stands on this issue and he promised me to certainly do so,” Peres said, adding that he is sure of Arafat’s sincerity.

Faisal Husseini, who serves as the PLO pro-consul in the occupied territories pending the establishment of a Palestinian government in January, said the PLO will condemn the murder and that it planned to “take steps to make sure such an act will not be repeated.”

“We can say that any operation like this, whether by an individual or a group, is totally rejected,” Husseini said.

Two weeks ago, when Mizrahi was stabbed, abducted and slain while buying eggs in an Arab village on the West Bank, both the PLO and the Israeli army blamed the killing on the militant Islamic Resistance Movement, called Hamas.

Military sources said Mizrahi’s killers left a leaflet at the scene saying that Hamas had carried out the attack.

But Wednesday, the army reported that the five Palestinians arrested in the West Bank town of Ramallah for the killing said they are members of Fatah. They also said they were acting on their own and contrary to orders.

Nonetheless, their membership in Fatah has quickly become an enormous political embarrassment to the Rabin government.

Rabin has repeatedly cited Fatah’s adherence to its pledge not to attack Israelis as proof that Arafat is a trustworthy partner in the peace process.

Israeli rightists have been demanding that Rabin break off talks with the PLO on Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the Jericho district on the West Bank.

So sensitive was the news of possible Fatah involvement that military censors delayed its publication for two days, releasing it late Friday and thus reducing the likelihood of protest demonstrations because of the Jewish Sabbath.

The confessions brought charges from Rabin’s political opponents that he had been duped by Arafat and that the PLO is continuing to mount attacks but under the name of Muslim fundamentalist groups.

Virtually all the 11 Israeli deaths since the accord was concluded in August were believed to have resulted from attacks by Hamas or other militant groups.

Even Rabin’s supporters and members of his Cabinet were shocked by Fatah’s alleged involvement--and seriously worried by the political implications.

“There can be no forgiveness,” said Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former general and confidant of Rabin. “This has just one answer--a sharp and immediate condemnation by the PLO.”

The announcement also puts Arafat in a difficult political position. The PLO leader has been willing to condemn terrorism in general but not to denounce specific Palestinian acts.

That, however, is precisely what Rabin has demanded and what Clinton seconded.

Arafat promised no less in the September peace agreement, Rabin said during an Oval Office photo session at the beginning of his meeting with Clinton.

“Keeping commitments is the basis for the advancement of peace. We will keep our commitments. We demand then that they keep their commitments,” he said.

At the same time as they put pressure on Arafat, however, both Rabin and Clinton stopped well short of threatening a break in the current Israeli-PLO peace talks.

“In the process of reaching an agreement there will be ups and downs, but I am quite sure that we and the Palestinians have passed the point of no return in our efforts to implement the agreement,” Rabin said.

Clinton also urged Israelis to have patience as the PLO tries to organize itself to assume the burdens of governing the territory.

PLO steps in that direction have been slow, and some of the deadlines set in the September agreement seem likely to slip.

“I wish that the pace had been more rapid,” Clinton said. “I would be quite concerned if I thought that the fact that we’re a little bit slow in the pace here was the result of some sort of deliberate desire to undermine an accord they had just signed off on.”

But, he said, “at the present moment, I can--I really believe it is more a function of the whole organization not being organized for, or experienced in, the work in which they must now engage.”

The statements exemplify what has been the main focus of Clinton’s policy toward the Middle East since the peace agreement was signed--trying to reassure nervous Israelis to give Rabin political maneuvering room.

“A big key toward achieving peace is maintaining support within the state of Israel for the peace process and for the risks that it entails,” Clinton said. “I hope you will tell your people that as they turn their energies and talents to the hard and daring work of building that comprehensive peace, the American people will stand by them,” he told Rabin.

That same theory is behind both Clinton’s call for an end to the boycott and the Administration’s measures to bolster Israel’s military security by selling additional advanced warplanes and, particularly, high-technology computers.

The boycott, Clinton said, is “a relic of past animosity that simply has no place in the architecture of peaceful relations we are all working to build in the Middle East.”

Asked if he had any commitments from Arab nations that have close relations with the United States, Clinton demurred.

“I have received some indications that the enforcement of the boycott is not as vigorous as it once was but that some of the countries involved are reluctant to explicitly lift it,” he said.

Meanwhile, in continuing violence on the West Bank, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian youth Friday as he fled while they searched his car at a roadblock north of Jerusalem, according to a military spokesman.

Troops also shot and wounded another Palestinian attempting to make his way through the fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

In other incidents, Palestinians stabbed two Israelis, one a soldier patrolling Jerusalem’s Old City and the other a contractor picking up workers from the Gaza Strip.

Lauter reported from Washington and Parks from Jerusalem.