Some of the fiercest congressional critics of the Palestine Liberation Organization are enthusiastically backing President Clinton’s decision to resume “dialogue and contacts” with the Tunis-based organization.
“It is entirely appropriate for dialogue to begin again,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) told reporters Friday following Clinton’s announcement that the United States would restart diplomatic contacts with the PLO that were halted in June 1990.
Lieberman’s support, however, did not come without qualification.
In a letter to Secretary of State Warren Christopher sent after Clinton’s announcement, Lieberman and Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) stated that the duty of the White House and the State Department to report to Congress on U.S. talks with the PLO should resume as well.
Such reporting procedures were outlined in 1989 legislation authored by Lieberman and Mack, requiring the president and the secretary of state to inform Congress periodically of the status of any talks between the U.S. government and the PLO.
Lieberman and Mack believe that Clinton’s resumption of dialogue with the PLO puts the reporting requirements into effect.
“Both Senator Mack and I agree with the decision” to resume contacts with the PLO, Lieberman told reporters. But he said that he and Mack also believed that the “reporting requirement comes back into effect again.”
The reporting requirement provides a “good forum for monitoring relations” between the United States and the PLO, Lieberman said.
“We are obviously entering an important new period,” the senators said in their letter to Christopher, “and we believe these reporting provisions can be of assistance in monitoring progress toward a lasting peace.”
In addition to outlining the reporting procedures, the 1989 legislation set guidelines for the rekindling of U.S.-PLO relations.
DIALOGUE COULD ADVANCE ‘LONG-STATED GOALS’
The legislation expanded the International Security and Development Cooperation Act of 1985, which prohibited any U.S. government contact with the PLO unless and until the PLO renounced terrorism, recognized Israel’s right to exist and accepted U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which recognize Israel’s right to live in secure borders while calling for the return of Arab territory.
Lieberman and Mack acknowledged in their letter to Christopher that these conditions had been met and U.S.-PLO contacts could resume.
“We concur that the U.S. conditions for resumption of a dialogue between the United States and the Palestine Liberation Organization have been met,” the letter read, “and that such a dialogue could contribute to the long-stated goals of the United States in this region.”
Clinton echoed these sentiments to reporters Friday in the White House Rose Garden.
The president first noted that the PLO had recognized Israel’s right to exist, renounced terrorism, taken responsibility for the actions of its constituents, agreed to discipline those elements that violate the new commitments, and nullified key elements of the Palestine National Covenant that denied Israel’s right to exist.
“These PLO commitments justify a resumption of our dialogue,” Clinton said. “I have decided to resume the dialogue and the contacts between the United States and the PLO.”
The president’s decision marks the latest chapter in the often rocky relations between the United States and PLO that began almost two decades ago.
Meetings between U.S. and PLO officials began as early as 1974. Henry Kissinger prohibited such meetings in 1975, when the conditions for resuming a dialogue with the PLO, later adopted in the Lieberman-Mack legislation of 1989, were set.
Direct contacts resumed in 1988, after PLO leader Yasir Arafat pledged that his organization had renounced terrorism and decided to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
But those low-level contacts, conducted exclusively by the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, were suspended again in June 1990, after the PLO refused to condemn an attempted terrorist attack on an Israeli beach staged by one of its factions.
DIALOGUE DOESN’T MEAN RECOGNITION
Arafat’s backing of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf War further weakened any chance that U.S.-PLO relations would be resuscitated.
In January of this year, after the Israeli Knesset voted to repeal a ban on contacts with the PLO, Washington maintained that no change in U.S. policy toward the PLO had taken effect.
“There has been no change in our policy as regards the PLO,” a State Department spokesperson said at the time.
This position was reportedly welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was then concerned the Knesset vote would prompt the United States to resume its dialogue with the PLO or support calls for the PLO to play a more direct role in the Middle East peace talks.
As recently as Aug. 30, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Washington was continuing to shun direct contacts with the PLO despite Israel’s direct contact with the group.
When asked whether such negotiations would provoke a change in Washington’s stance toward the PLO, a State Department spokesman replied at the time, “There’s no change in our policy.”
Clinton was careful Friday to emphasize dialogue and contacts with, but not recognition of, the PLO.
In responding to a question on U.S. recognition of the PLO, Clinton said, “We expect the dialogue to produce further and clearer expressions of our policy on that.”
At a State Department briefing last Thursday, spokesman Mike McCurry told reporters that resuming the U.S. dialogue with the PLO is “a much different question” than “establishing some formal recognition.”
Nevertheless, it is clear that the level of U.S. dialogue with the PLO will now be much higher than it was in 1989 and 1990.
Appearing Sunday on CBS Television’s “Face the Nation,” Secretary of State Christopher said he personally expected to meet with Arafat on Monday, following the signing of an Israeli-PLO accord on self-rule in the administered territories.
The secretary said, “An awful lot of taboos have been broken in the last few days.”
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.
