Plans for Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson to meet Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat during a Middle East tour this month are being studied, informed sources said today. The Foreign Office confirmed that Cheysson, who has already met the PLO representative to France, Farouk Kaddoumi, would visit Lebanon, Syria and Jordan at the end of August.
But sources added a possible meeting with Arafat in Beirut was under review and a report was due for presentation to the Foreign Minister. Arafat has already met one French Foreign Minister. He had talks with Jean Sauvagnargues in 1974 in the Middle East, shortly after the new government of former President Valery Giscard D’Estaing took office. The Sauvagnargues-Arafat meeting brought a storm of protest from the Jewish community and other groups in France.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.