A strong official protest is expected from Israel in response to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s invitation to two members of the Palestine Liberation Organization to meet with her in London as part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.
Thatcher announced the invitation Friday, in Amman, at the end of her visit to Jordan. Israeli Premier Shimon Peres told a Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem today that he intends to send a letter to Thatcher protesting her intention to meet with the PLO men and the arms sales deal she set up with Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
The joint delegation to meet with Thatcher and Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe here will include Jordan’s Deputy Premier Abdel Wahab Al-Majali, Foreign Minister Taher Al-Masri and two Palestinians –Mohammed Milhem, former Mayor of Halhoul, whom the Israelis expelled from the West Bank in 1980, and Bishop Elia Khoury, Suffragan (Anglican) Archbishop of Jerusalem.
Milhem is a member of the 15-man PLO Executive. Khoury is a member of the Palestine National Council (PNC), the Palestinian parliament-in-exile, which Israel considers to be a PLO body.
A FIRST FOR WESTERN HEAD OF STATE
Thatcher will be the first head of a Western government to meet officially with PLO members. Peres told his Cabinet that she maintains that these two men “want peace.” She insisted in her announcement in Jordan that the invitation does not mean Britain recognizes the PLO. But she denied strongly that the meeting would be an empty gesture. She said it was intended to give positive support to King Hussein’s peace initiative which she said was proceeding more slowly than expected.
There is some conjecture here that Thatcher’s meeting with the joint delegation will lay the groundwork for a similar meeting by U.S. officials.
Peres is reported to have noted bitterly that Britain, with its Irish problem, was especially sensitive to terrorism and it was therefore all the more incomprehensible and regrettable that Mrs. Thatcher should have invited two high ranking PLO members.
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