The leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat, today thanked France for its role in the Lebanese crisis in a Bastille Day message addressed to President Francois Mitterrand. Arafat said in his personal note that “Lebanon and the Palestinians have the right to resist Israeli aggression” and expressed the hope that a solution to the crisis will be found.
The message, released by the PLO delegation here, indicated the importance attached to France’s announcement that it would be willing to participate in a multinational force to ensure the evacuation of PLO forces from west Beirut and oversee the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon. Mitterrand, in a Bastille Day television interview today said that France’s suggestion for a multinational force “if accepted would serve Israel’s honor just as (it) would serve that of the Palestinians. Neither side must be humiliated.”
Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson told reporters at a Bastille Day celebration that “France’s friendship for Israel remains unchanged.” He said that both Mitterrand and the government “continue to feel the same deep attachment for Israel and its people.” Cheysson deplored the recent Franco- Israeli incident over Mitterrand’s use of the Nazi perpetrated massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane in connection with the Lebanese affair and said “it is just a technical incident ” which will not affect relations between the two countries.
One of Mitterrand’s aides, Jacques Attali, was far more outspoken on this subject. He termed Israel’s reaction and protests as “wrong, deplorable and provocative.” Attali this morning met Israeli Ambassador Meir Rosenne and reportedly complained again against the Israeli protests, saying that Mitterrand’s words “were quoted out of context.”
Mitterrand, in response to a question from a reporter, said last Friday in Budapest that he “did not condone Oradour in France and I would not condone it in Lebanon.” On June 10, 1944 the retreating Nazi armies massacted 614 people in the hamlet of Oradour in the southwest of France in retaliation for an attack by local resistance fighters.
Meanwhile, an advisor to Arafat, Issam Sartawi, said yesterday that he could say “on the firmest official ground, on behalf of the governing body of the PLO, the Palestinian National Council, “that the PLO “has formally conceded to Israel in the most unequivocal manner the right to exist on a reciprocal basis.”
Sartawi, who made this statement in a speech to the French Institute of International Relations, said his affirmation in a public speech should satisfy a basic condition demanded by the United States for it to recognize the PLO. He would not say whether his statement had been authorized by Arafat. The United States’ position has been that it will not deal with the PLO until it recognizes Israel’s right to exist and until it accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
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