Arafat Gets Cool Reception to Speech at U.N. in Geneva

Yasir Arafat delivered a rambling speech to the U.N. Human Rights Commission here Thursday that accused Israel of all manner of crimes and outrages against the Palestinian people.

But he got a lukewarm reception, even from the Arab delegations that packed the hall.

The news media were clearly less interested in his polemics than in a recording of a wire-tapped telephone conversation he allegedly had last month with the Palestine Liberation Organization’s representative in Paris, Ibrahim Souss, in which he unleashed invectives against the Jews.

The PLO chief claimed the offensive remarks had been “dubbed” into the tape broadcast by Cable News Network but was generally vague on the subject.

Arafat’s appearance here was his first at an international forum since he sided with Saddam Hussein of Iraq in the Persian Gulf crisis and war last year, and his first address to the 53-member human rights panel since 1988.

If he had hoped to recoup the prestige gained four years ago, he failed completely.

Under pressure from the United States, Arafat was denied use of the podium, which is reserved for heads of state. He spoke from his seat on the rostrum.

Israel was absent from the hall and the United States was represented by one low-level official.

Arafat got no standing ovation from the Arabs as in 1988, and the applause after he spoke was tepid.

He was addressed as “chairman,” not “president,” as he had asked, claiming to be chief of the unborn “state of Palestine.”

‘HATEFUL AND RACIST RHETORIC’

The head of the U.S. delegation to the Human Rights Commission, Kenneth Blackwell, told a news conference before Arafat spoke that “consistent with our non-recognition of the self-proclaimed ‘state of Palestine,’ we oppose Arafat speaking as a ‘head of state,’ since the PLO is accredited as an observer delegation.”

With respect to the notorious tape that overshadowed Arafat’s visit, Blackwell observed that “people who are truly interested in Arab-Israel reconciliation ought not to be engaging in hateful and racist rhetoric.”

In the conversation, the voice said to be Arafat’s denounced Jews as “dogs, filth, dirt” for allegedly protesting the brief visit to a Paris hospital last month of George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is suspected of numerous terrorist outrages.

CNN said it obtained the tape from a Western law-enforcement agency.

Arafat, at a news conference of his own, seemed evasive on the subject. “It is a fabricated tape. There are sections on this tape that are fabricated. Therefore, it is not something which concerns me. It concerns the French government,” he said.

But the PLO chief did not deny the conversation took place or that his was the voice on tape.

The Arafat who spoke Thursday was not the colorful figure of old. He seemed to perspire profusely, and his hands shook at times as he delivered his pro-forma attacks on Israel and Israel’s allies.

The Palestinians have made enough concessions and will make no more, he said. The intifada will continue and grow.

He begged the United Nations to provide protection to the Palestinians, whom he claimed were being starved by the Israelis and thrown into Nazi-style “concentration camps.”

Arafat condemned the United States and Germany for giving Israel billions of dollars he claimed were used to build settlements in Palestinian territory.

In his next sentence, though, he praised the United States and Secretary of State James Baker for conditioning U.S. loan guarantees for immigrant absorption to an Israeli settlement freeze.