Some 5000 people attended a meeting last night held to protest against reported French government plans to invite Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat to Paris. The participants adopted a resolution calling on the French government to adopt a “more balanced-policy” in the Middle East and warning that an invitation to Arafat to visit Paris would be considered “an insult and a provocation” by all freedom-loving people in France.
The speakers, including several non-Jews such as Gen. Pierre Lecomte, president of the France-Israel Alliance, and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, president of the Resistance Action Committee, stressed that the PLO, Charter provides for Israel’s destruction.
French authorities say there are no immediate plans for an Arafat visit to France but that “no basic difficulties” exist, It is believed that the visit is being held up by French demands of Palestinian concessions in south Lebanon, such as an evacuation of the territory close to the Israeli border to enable the central government in Beirut to assume control to the area.
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