Shamir denies he negotiated with P.L.O.

Press, 28 July 1989, Page 9

Shamir denies he negotiated with P.L.O.

NZPA-Reuter Jerusalem he Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, in his first public comment on recent meetings with Palestinians from the occupied territories, has strongly denied his talks amounted to indirect negotiations with the P.L.O.

Right-wing rivals in Mr Shamir’s Likud Party had charged that the Prime Minister, by meeting a declared supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, had included the banned group in Israeli peace moves for the first time. “The people who come to me, not one of them told me he was authorised by the P.L.O. to come,” Mr Shamir said on television. “If they had said a word about the P.L.O. I would have told them, ‘Stop. Don’t talk to me about the P.L.O. because I won’t talk to them’.” Jamil Tarifi, who supports Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah group, said on Tuesday he had met Mr Shamir to discuss elections Mr Shamir has proposed in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. He refused to say if he had reported back to the P.L.O. Mr Shamir, aged 73, appeared irritated and defensive at times during the 30-minute interview which focused on the proposed elections, which he hopes will produce a nonP.L.O. leadership. Mr Shamir described the conversations as “exploratory talks... very

Asked how Israel could avoid the P.L.O. after the United States had told an Israeli diplomat that there could be no Middle East peace initiative without the Palestinian group, Mr Shamir said, “They don’t say that to us. They didn’t say that to us. Until today they have not said this.” The P.L.O. has backed a 19-month Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza. “This is a grave new situation ... this puts the P.L.O. at the centre of the Israeli diplomatic and political stage,” the Deputy Prime Minister, David Levy, a rival for power inside Mr Shamir’s Likud party, said. Mr Levy and two other Likud Cabinet members who oppose Mr Shamir’s peace initiative, Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Modal, planned to hold a meeting of their supporters to discuss the Prime Minister’s talks with Palestinians. Mr Shamir’s meetings seem to have pacified the Labour party, which had threatened to quit the coalition Government over hardline constraints attached to the peace plan by Mr Sharon, Mr Levy and Mr Modai.

far from negotiations of any kind.” He insisted he never had talked to and never would talk to the P.L.0., which he brands a terrorist group. “I don't expect anything from Yasser Arafat. I don’t see in the future any trace whatsoever of an understanding between me and this creature,” he said. “It is not important to me what (Mr Arafat) says. I know what he wants. I know he wants to see me and all of us dead.”