Official’s PLO Remarks Not Policy, Shamir Asserts

JERUSALEM —  The Foreign Ministry, trying to extract itself from a political squabble, denied today that its No. 2 official was voicing Israeli policy when he said the PLO was the national organization of the Palestinian people.

“It is true that he said . . . the PLO is the national organization of the Palestinian people, but he meant it is seen so in the eyes of the Palestinian people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alon Liel said.

The government voiced strong objections to Director General Avraham Tamir’s remarks, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir accused him of improper behavior and charged that his “statements do not match Israel’s position and contravene the government’s policy.”

Tamir said Thursday during a visit to Washington that the only way to end the 8-month-old uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip was through “negotiations with the Palestinian leadership.”

“Whether we like it or not, the PLO is the movement of the Palestinians,” the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying.

“Everybody knows the PLO is the national organization for the Palestinian people. There is no replacement for that organization. The question is not how to replace the PLO, but how to change it,” said Tamir, a member of the centrist Labor Party.

Liel denied that Tamir’s remarks represented a change in Israel’s stance toward the PLO.

“The policy has not changed,” he said. “We still see them as a terror organization, and no one from Israel should talk to them as long as they refuse to renounce terrorism, recognize Israel and accept (United Nations) Resolutions 242 and 338.”

He also said Tamir “was not recommending that we talk to the PLO.”