Syrian paper delivers severe attack on Arafat

Press, 11 July 1983, Page 10

Syrian paper delivers severe attack on Arafat

NZPA Damascus Syria’s Government newspaper called the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s chief, Yasser Arafat, a “traitor” at the week-end, and threatened to “chop off his fingers.” The editorial in “Tishrin” marked a sharp increase in the two-week-old war of words between the Sovietbacked regime of Hafez Assad and Mr Arafat, who was expelled from Damascus on June 24. The front-page commentary asserted that Mr Arafat had never squarely condemned President Ronald Reagan’s Middle East peace plan of September 1 last year, or the Lebanon-Israeli withdrawal accord which was mediated by the United States and signed on May 17.

It accused Mr Arafat of crushing several previous attempts to introduce reforms in the P.L.0., and

disputed his right to make an independent decision on the Palestinian question or the Arab-Israeli conflict. “Palestinian organisations and fighters who demanded organisational or political reforms have failed in correcting the deviationist course of the traitor (Arafat) who resorted to arms against them,” “Tishrin” said. “But now Syria will support all the just and national demands of the reformers.” That was a clear reference to the two-month-old mutiny led against Mr Arafat’s leadership by a breakaway P.L.O. colonel, said Musa, in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Asserting that “Palestine is the southern part of Syria,” “Tishrin” said: “There is no room for the independent decision of anyone as far as the Palestinian cause and the Arab-Israeli conflict are concerned.

“The independent decision as we understand it is a comprehensive (Israeli) withdrawal and the rights of the Palestinians to an independent State on their soil,” “Tishrin” said.

“Anyone who practises the independent decision in a different course, we shall chop off his fingers. We shall never allow the freedom of treason, or the freedom of selling the cause.”

Meanwhile a senior assistant to Mr Arafat told Reuter in Rome yesterday that Mr Arafat would visit Moscow this week to discuss the split in the P.L.O. and his quarrel with Syria. Speaking to reporters at Rome airport on his way from Tunis to East Berlin, Salah Khalaf said that Farouk Kaddoumi, the P.L.O.’s “foreign minister,” would go to Moscow to prepare the visit. Mr Khalaf, also known as Abu Iyad and usually regarded as Mr Arafat’s No. 2

in the mainstream Fatah guerrilla group, said that the Soviet invitation had come at the right moment.

“Consultation is needed with the Soviet Union on the divergence between Syria and the Palestinians,” he said.

Mr Khalaf said that a commission set up by the P.L.O.’s executive committee to mediate with Syria and dissident groups, who have rebelled against Mr Arafat’s leadership, had achieved nothing. He said that it had gone to Damascus seeking a cease-fire and an “open, sincere and equal dialogue” with Syria. Mr Khalaf said that the dissident movement had been created with Syrian and Libyan support. “Inside any party there are constructive differences and requests for improvement but you cannot use arms to formulate requests.”