Israel puts P.L.O. pull-out plan in doubt

Press, 9 August 1982, Page 6

Israel puts P.L.O. pull-out plan in doubt

NZPA-Reuter

A plan by the American Middle East envoy, Philip Habib, to move 'out the trapped Palestinian guerrillas from west Beirut has been thrown into doubt by indications that Israel may reject one of its central planks.

Lebanese officials involved in talks on the plan said yesterday that the pull-out of the estimated 6000 guerrillas could begin this week. According to reports of the plan, an advance party of a proposed international force would arrive one day after the first batch of fighters leaves Beirut. Beirut radio said that Mr Habib would go to Israel today for talks on the problem.

Mr Habib met Lebanese Government leaders yesterday to hear the latest P.L.O. propoals on the pull-out and the role of the international force in overseeing it. The Leftist daily “asSafir,” which is close to the P.L.0., said that the P.L.O. was proposing that the pullout take place over two weeks, with the first contingent leaving a makeshift port in west Beirut for the Jordanian port of Aqaba. “As-Safir” said that the new P.L.O. plan had overcome one prickly point — what to do with the guerrillas’ heavy weapons. It said they would be handed over to

the Lebanese Army in Beirut on day 14 of the withdrawal. The P.L.O. previously had wanted to take its heavy weapons along the BeirutDamascus highway beyond the limit of Israeli-held territory at the town of Sofar, the newspaper said.

It said that the United States would guarantee that the departing fighters would not see any Israeli soldiers as they passed down the Damascus road, dropping a previous request that the international force guarantee its security behind Israeli lines. But a senior Israeli Government official said yesterday that Israel would not agree to the force’s being deployed before all the' fighters had left. The negotiations have so far been conducted between Mr Habib and leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation through Lebanese officials.

Political sources said that an Israeli rejection of the plan could put the talks back to the beginning, raising fears of a new Israeli assault on battered west Beirut.

The advance party of the international force is expected to be made up of French paratroopers, who would be joined later by contingents from other countries still to be decided.

Israel apparently fears' that the next of the fighters will refuse to leave west

Beirut if foreign troops are on the ground to separate the Israeli Army from the guerrilla fighters. Yesterday's negotiations took place in an atmosphere of unusual calm in west Beirut, broken only by two brief flare-ups of artillery and rocket fire in the evening. About 5000 demonstrators marched through the main streets of Tel Aviv at the week-end to protest against the war and demand negotiations with the P.L.O.

The demonstration, attended mostly by young people and some Israeli Arabs, was called by the Com-

mittee Against the War in Lebanon; formed by Leftwing academics and militants of the Israeli Communist Party. Sudan yesterday modified its offer to provide a haven for all the trapped guerrillas. The Sudanese President (General Jaafar Numeiry) announced last month that he would receive the besieged guerrillas in Sudan unconditionally. But the Sudanese Ambassador to Egypt yesterday said that his country would now do that only if it was related to a comprehensive solution to the Palestinian problem. Moscow reacted angrily yesterday to Washington’s veto of its Security Council resolution on Lebanon on Saturday, saying., that the United. States had shown cynical disregard for the United Nations and world public opinion.

The official Soviet news agency, TASS, said that the American action meant Washington was now “directly taking part in the aggression against the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples.” Eleven members, including France and Japan, voted for the Soviet resolution which called for an arms and military aid embargo against Israel until its troops were withdrawn from Lebanon. The United States described the resolution as unbalanced.