Yasir Arafat’s declaration that the Palestine Liberation Organization Covenant is “null and void” is “the start of the clarification of this issue,” French President Francois Mitterrand was reported to comment at the weekly Cabinet session Wednesday. But Jewish and Israeli leaders took an opposite view to the PLO leader’s remarks, made during a French television interview Tuesday a few hours after his 90-minute meeting with Mitterrand.
Arafat’s use of the French phrase “c’est caduque” — null and void — to describe the covenant is “just words,” said Theo Klein, president of CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish Organizations.
“Can Israel trust its security to world, just words?” he asked.
Klein’s comments echoed those of Ovadia Soffer, Israel’s ambassador to France, who said “Israel’s security should not depend on the words of a terrorist.”
The PLO’s 25-year-old covenant calls for the destruction of Israel through “armed struggle.”
Some 10,000 Jews demonstrated Tuesday in front of the Rue Copernic Synagogue, where four people were in killed in a terrorist act in October 1980.
In spite of calls for quiet and calm, police forces had to be used to repulse demonstrators who marched on the Hotel Crillon, where Arafat was staying. The PLO chief was not there at the time.
Arafat met Tuesday night with a dozen Jewish intellectuals and artists. One, the popular singer Sapho, read poem written in his honor at a reception attended by over 500 people.
A small group of Israelis, who would not give their names, also called on Arafat at the Hotel Crillon and later attended the reception.
PREPARED TO NEGOTIATE
Meanwhile, Arafat on Wednesday continued to clarify his stand, which is considered some of the strongest and clearest language to date expressing the PLO’s intention to recognize Israel.
“We want to negotiate, and obviously we are prepared to do so with our worst enemies, as long as they are elected by the Israelis,” he told a French radio interviewer.
“I am even prepared to negotiate with (Israeli Industry and Trade Minister Ariel) Sharon, although he says he wants to assassinate Arafat and admitted having tried to kill me no several past occasions.”
Arafat also said that Israel should stop “being afraid of peace,” adding, “after 40 years of war, it is the only solution.”
When told by the interviewer, who is Jewish, that “the trouble is that my mother does not trust you,” Arafat retorted: “My mother does not trust (Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak) Shamir either, but we have no choice. We have to try peace after having tried war.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Arafat met with French Prime Minister Michel Rocard and was toattend a state dinner in his honor that evening given by Rocard.
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