The refusal by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to receive a leading PLO official has caused the postponement, for a second time, of a visit to Britain by an Arab League delegation led by King Hassan of Morocco.
The king was expected here this week with the seven-member committee set up by the Fez Arab summit in September to explain the summit’s peace plan to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
The delegation has already seen President Reagan in Washington and was originally scheduled here at the beginning of November. That visit was put off amid reports that the Queen, still smarting over being discourteously treated by King Hassan in Morocco two years ago, was in no hurry to see him again.
Hassan is now said to have pulled out because of Mrs. Thatcher’s refusal to receive the PLO delegation if it includes Farouk Kaddoumi, the PLO’s top foreign policy spokesman.
Her refusal suggests that she may be taking a more anti-PLO line than the British Foreign Office. Only last Wednesday, in a Parliamentary debate, Foreign Secretary Francis Pym stoutly defended previous contacts between British and PLO officials (including Kaddoumi) and said that the Reagan peace proposals would fail without the PLO.
Mrs. Thatcher’s attitude may have also been influenced by last week’s failure by the PLO-Central Council in Damascus to offer to recognize Israel, regarded here as necessary for greater British acknowledgment of the PLO.
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