The Reagan Administration said today that it views the surprise meeting in Cairo between Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt as “an encouraging development.”
State Department spokesman John Hughes noted that the meeting this morning took place in the context of “Egypt’s adherence to the Camp David accords and its outspoken support” for President Reagan’s Middle East peace initiative.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Kamal Hassan Ali, who met with Reagan yesterday, said Egypt believes that Arafat, who was forced out of Lebanon by a Syrian-backed dissident PLO force, remains “the most popular leader” among the Palestinians.
“We are hopeful that such talks will serve to persuade Mr. Arafat that peace negotiations within the framework of the President’s initiative are the best means of achieving Palestinian goals,” Hughes said. He said there was no communication from Israel today on Jeru- salem’s strong objections to the Arafat-Mubarak meeting. But, he noted, this was “a dispute between Israel and Egypt.”
“We are not meeting with Mr. Arafat or the PLO,” Hughes added. He said the U.S. position “remains absolutely unchanged” that it will not meet with the PLO until the terrorist organization recognizes Israel’s right to exist and accepts United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.
But while Hughes said he did not know what the outcome of the talks in Cairo would be, he indicated that the U.S. hopes they would lead to further talks between Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan that will result in Jordan entering the peace negotiations.
“We have urged Jordanian and Palestinian involvement in the peace process,” Hughes said. But he stressed that it would be up to the Palestinians and Hussein to decide “just where those Palestinians would be drawn from” and “what kind of Palestinians they would be.”
If such a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation was agreed upon, then it would be up to Israel to decide if it was willing to “sit down” with it, Hughes said. He said the U.S. knows that Israel will not sit down with representatives of the PLO.
Hughes made it clear that Israel’s rejection of the Reagan initiative should not hamper it from joining the talks if Jordan could be convinced to enter them. He said the proposals by Reagan of September 1, 1982 are the positions the U.S. would take into the negotiations because it thinks they are “the best plan.” But the other parties, Israel, Egypt and the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, could all enter the negotiations with their own proposals, Hughes said.
He stressed that the major objective of the Reagan initiative is to get the parties to the negotiating table.
RUMSFELD MEETS WITH HUSSEIN
It was revealed, meanwhile, that Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld, met with Hussein in London prior to returning to Washington last night from his second mission to the Middle East.
Rumsfeld met with Reagan for 20 minutes this morning and according to the White House, briefed him on Lebanon, the overall Middle East peace situation and developments in the Persian Gulf. No details were given of Rumsfeld’s meeting with Reagan or his meeting with Hussein. The envoy is expected to return to the Middle East in the “near future”, the White House said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
