Canadian Official Says Stanfield is Free to Make Contact with PLO

Robert Stanfield, Prime Minister Joe Clark’s ambassador-at-large to, the Middle East, is free to make contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization if he so chooses, External Affairs Minister Flora MacDonald said in Ottawa yesterday. She said the Cabinet gave Stanfield no instructions on consulting the PLO while he is in the Middle East and it is up to him to do so or not. MacDonald added, however, that “There is no question of official recognition of the PLO at this time” by Canada. Before Stanfield left he said he would not talk to PLO officials.

Clark said in a radio interview earlier this week that he would consider recognizing the PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian people if it renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist. Stanfield, a former leader of Clark’s Progressive Conservative Party, was sent on a fact-finding mission to the Middle East last month.

His assignment is to elicit the views of Israel and the Arab states on Clark’s election campaign promise to move Canada’s Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and to assess the Middle East situation in general. He will submit his recommendations some time next year. Clark said on the radio interview that he still believed Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel but would have to consider Stanfield’s recommendations before acting.

Meanwhile, former Premier Pierre Elliott Trudeau, leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, accused the government of having muddled the entire Mideast question when it promised to move the Embassy and then backtracked under pressure from Arab countries. “It is one of the shoddiest spectacles in the annals of Canadian public life, ” Trudeau said. He said that instead of admitting he was wrong on the Embassy shift, Clark chose to send Stanfield as “a sacrificial lamb” to study the issue.