Arafat seeks fleet for troops

Press, 9 December 1983, Page 6

Arafat seeks fleet for troops

NZPA-Reuter Tripoli The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, has asked for a multinational flotilla to escort him and 4000 loyalist guerrillas out of Tripoli, a northern Lebanese port, where he is surrounded by Syrian-backed rebels.

An Arafat spokesman, Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, said yesterday that the Palestine Liberation Organisation's chairman needed the ships to protect his men from Israeli attack as they sailed to Tunisia and North Yemen.

He said that Mr Arafat was asking France, Greece and the Soviet Union to provide the escort. He had already arranged for four Greek ships to carry his men out under the symbolic protection of the United Nations flag. Lebanese negotiators said yesterday that the two-week countdown to the withdrawal had begun.

Mr Abdel-Rahman noted that the Israeli Minister Without Portfolio, Mr Ariel Sharon, had said that Mr Arafat should not be allowed out of Tripoli alive because that would lead to the reconstitution of the divided P.L.O. Mr Sharon made the statement after a bomb blast on an Israeli bus in Jerusalem killed four people and wounded 43 on Tuesday. Both wings of the P.L.O. claimed responsibility for the attack.

Senior Israeli officials have refused to say whether Israeli warships in the Mediterranean will let Mr Arafat leave peacefully. In Damascus, a former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rashid Karami, the head of the Lebanese team mediating between Mr Arafat and his opponents, said that both sides had been informed of the final arrangements for the removal of Mr Arafat’s men.

But Mr Abdel-Rahman, speaking before Mr Karami’s statement reached Tripoli, said that the arrangements were still open to discussion if either side felt they were inadequate.

Mr Karami has apparently skirted the question of who should supervise the Palestinian refugee camps at Baddawi and Nahr elBared, both to the north of Tripoli and now in rebel hands.

He told reporters on Tuesday that that was a matter for the Palestinians to decide among themselves. Mr Arafat had expected him to guarantee a loyalist presence in the camps.

“It is still a hot issue,” Mr Abdel-Rahman said.

In Athens a Greek spokesman said that his Government had agreed to a request by Mr Arafat for ships.

In London the British

Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, yesterday ruled out any unilateral British pull-out from the four-nation Western peace-keeping force in Lebanon. “Britain will not consider unilateral withdrawal or lead a strategic retreat from Lebanon,” she said.

Political pressure for pulling out the 100-man British force sent to Beirut in February to join American, French, and Italian units has risen after recent American bombing raids on Syrian positions. bynan iorces in Lebanon yesterday handed over the body of a United States Navy pilot shot down over Syrian-held territory on Sunday. The Syrians gave the body of Lieutenant Mark Lange, aged 26, to the Lebanese Army in the mountains north-east of Beirut. The Lebananese passed it on to the United

States Marines at Beirut airport.

Political sources in Damascus said that the early release of the body had been a sign of Syrian good will towards Washington after a period of tension between United States and Syrian forces in Lebanon.

In Jerusalem the Israeli Prime Minister. Mr Yitzhak Shamir, said yesterday that Israel would strike at the Palestine Liberation Organisation for the bombing of a civilian bus on Tuesday.

“We will reach out and strike them in every way until this abominable evil disappears,” Mr Shamir told Parliament. Mr Shamir said that the bombing had showed that Mr Arafat was not a moderate.

“To our sorrow, many of those in the West will, even after yesterday’s crime, continue to believe in the myth that Arafat and his people have moderated their stand.”