Row over secret P.L.O. contacts

Press, 24 September 1987, Page 6

Row over secret P.L.O. contacts

By

GAIL FTTZER

Reuters (through NZPA) Tel Aviv A row over secret meetings with supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation is engulfing the Right-wing Herut party of the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir. In the latest development, one member says that senior party officials knew that he had clandestine sessions with P.L.O. advocates. Mr Shamir told a Herut convention this week that Israel would never negotiate with the P.L.O. and repeated his calls for direct negotiations with Arab states. ' A Herut politician, Moshe Amirav, who recently conferred with the pro-P.L.O. activists, Faisal Husseini, Sarah Nusseibeh and Salah Zuheikeb, about Palestinian autonomy in Israeli-occupied territories, declined ip name the Herat officials. : - 5 ,jHe told Israel ' television! “The intention was definitely that they would be Involved. I did not do this as something private that should remain between myself and the Palestinans I met.

“There were senior people who knew about each meeting. There is no point (to name them) now that the affair has been exposed.” Mr Shamir’s office and the Foreign Ministry refused to tell police if they had allowed Parliamentarians to meet senior P.L.O. representatives abroad in violation of an Israeli law barring such contacts, senior police sources said. The ’ Police Commissioner, David Krauss, said his men were having difficulties investigating Leftwing legislators who had met top P.L.O. officials including the chairman, Yasser Arafat, in Rumania, Hungary and Switzerland. Israeli and Palestinian peace activists charged that — despite denials from Mr Shamir’s office — the Right-wing Prime Minister knew of the meetings between Mr Amirav , and p the P.L.O. supporters. "He (Mr Shamir) never agreed or disagreed with this initiative, but he knew about it,” a peace activist, David Ish-Shalom, told a news conference. He produced no docu-

mentary evidence but said Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, which reports to the Prime Minister, knew of the contacts, as did the Rumanian President, Nicolae Ceaucescu, who met Mr Shamir in Bucharest last month. Mr Amirav denied that Mr Shamir was aware of his contacts with the P.L.O. sympathisers.

Mr Shamir told his Herut party: “There will never be negotiations with the P.L.O. We agreed that we will work for political activity, that we will act for direct negotiations with our neighbours according to the principles of Camp David.” He was referring to the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace accords • which urged Palestinian autonomy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip." The Herat secretariat refused calls from hawk'ish members to debate Mr Amirav’s meetings. Mr Amirav praised the decision, saying:' “I have no intention to meet again with people who identify with the P.L.O. But I plan to struggle ' within my movement for a moderate and realistic approach towards the Palestinians.” -