Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, claimed that the Palestine Liberation Organization uses duty-free shops and stands at several European airports to pass along weapons, explosives, money and documents to terrorists for attacks on civil aviation.
Netanyahu made the charge in an interview published in Maariv. He said terrorists made use of the PLO facilities to smuggle explosives into or out of the countries without having to pass through security checks. He did not name the airports or the countries.
According to Netanyahu, terrorist attacks on airlines have decreased sharply since the U.S. air strike against Libya last May 14. He said there has been a parallel improvement in airline security and that U.S. airlines were approaching Israel for help to improve security measures.
Netanyahu said the Western nations are beginning to understand that civil airlines are a link between all countries “and when the terrorist virus infiltrates one of them, it endangers all the airlines.” (By Gil Sedan)
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.
