5 U.S. Jewish Leaders Meet With Arafat : Press PLO Leader to Recognize Israel and Renounce Terrorism

WASHINGTON —  In a move that already has created enormous controversy in the U.S. Jewish community, five prominent American Jews met Tuesday with Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat in Stockholm.

The seven-hour talks, arranged by the Swedish Foreign Ministry, were aimed at obtaining a clear-cut statement from Arafat accepting Israel’s right to exist and renouncing terrorism.

Those two key issues were addressed at a meeting last month in Algiers of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s so-called parliament in exile. At that session, the PLO declared an independent Palestinian state while accepting U.N. Resolutions 338 and 242, which implicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist. It also denounced terrorism but said it retains the right to struggle against Israeli occupation.

The U.S. State Department interpreted the moves as insufficient to warrant direct talks with the PLO.

During the discussions Tuesday, Arafat and his three-man delegation sought to link PLO recognition of Israel with simultaneous establishment of a Palestinian state. In blunt terms, he was told that a statement on Israel had to stand alone.

“It was rough going,” said one of the Americans interviewed about the Stockholm talks, “but everything looks like a go.

“In my mind, there was no ambiguity in his final response,” the source said. “He said ‘Yes.’ ” But the source conceded that Arafat has made pledges to American and Israeli delegations in the past that have come up short.

The meeting culminated a secret six-month effort in which Swedish Foreign Minister Sten Andersson played the key role, according to delegation sources. The group plans a news conference today in which Arafat is expected to agree to “clarifications” on the two key issues. The two groups were guests of the Foreign Ministry at a dinner Tuesday night.

The delegation is led by Rita Hauser, chairman of the U.S. branch of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, which is headed by former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban. The delegation also includes Drora Kass, the center’s executive director; Los Angeles economist and publisher Stanley Sheinbaum; Menachem Rosensaft, a naturalized American Jew born in a Nazi concentration camp, who is founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and Avraham Udovitch, chairman of the department for Near East Studies at Princeton University.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry expressed stupefaction over the surprise session and warned that the Arafat visit to Sweden, the first in five years, could be “very damaging” to diplomatic relations between the two nations.

Meanwhile, several American Jewish groups immediately disowned both the effort and the participants. B’nai B’rith, the world’s largest Jewish organization, called the meeting “a fraud being perpetrated on international public opinion.”

It said members of the delegation “have always been isolated individuals in the American Jewish community who have argued that the PLO is a legitimate partner for peace.”