Yasir Arafat is due to arrive in Paris for an official visit early next month, and informed sources say the Palestine Liberation Organization leader plans to use the occasion to welcome the Israeli proposal for elections in the territories.
But Arafat is expected to call for international supervision of the elections by the United States and the 12-nation European Community. Israeli leaders are said to be opposed to international supervision.
The sources said Arafat will arrive in Paris for a 24-hour stay during the first week in May. He will be greeted with a protocol “less than that granted to a visiting prime minister, but more than that normally given the head of a national liberation movement.”
PLO representatives who visited Paris last week to prepare for the visit told French officials that Arafat “will take a constructive stand on the peace process and will welcome the election plan.”
It is expected that Arafat will go much further during his visit than he did Sunday in Tunis. He was quoted there as saying that he would favor elections under United Nations supervision only after an Israeli army withdrawal from the territories.
Mitterrand, who is due to meet with President Bush on May 18, will be the first leader of a major Western country to receive the PLO leader.
JEWISH DEMONSTRATION UNCERTAIN
The leaders of France’s main Jewish organizations are publishing in the Tuesday edition of the daily newspaper Le Monde an open letter addressed to Mitterrand, asking him to reconsider his decision.
The letter is signed by Theo Klein, president of CRIF, the representative body of French Jewry; David de Rothschild, the president of the FSJU, France’s Jewish federation of welfare funds; Chief Rabbi Joseph Sitruk; former Chief Rabbi Rene Samuel Sirat; and a dozen other prominent Jewish personalities.
France’s Jewish organizations have not yet decided on whether to call for a mass demonstration against the visit. Some community leaders fear that such a spectacle could be counterproductive in view of growing public sympathy here for the Palestinians and negative press coverage of Israel’s methods in suppressing their uprising in the territories.
Others insist on holding a mass demonstration to show the French government that the Jewish community feels strongly about this issue and that the PLO should not be given any international recognition.
It seems likely that no communitywide demonstration will be staged, but that several organizations, such as the local Herut and Betar branches, will hold demonstrations of their own.
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