Donald McHenry, who has replaced Andrew Young as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, indicated he would not meet with Yasir Arafat or any other Palestine Liberation Organization official until it meets the conditions set by the Carter Administration. He also said that he personally wants the PLO to renounce terrorism.
But McHenry, in an interview last week on the Public Broadcasting Service’s “MacNeil/Lehrer Report,” stressed that there can be “no solution to the Middle East” conflict “without a solution to the Palestinian” problem. He said “representatives of the Palestinian people” must be involved in the Mideast talks.
Asked whether he would have met with Zehadi Labib Terzi, the PLO observer at the UN, as Young did in July, McHenry, who was Young’s deputy, replied, “I don’t know what I would have done.” He refused to go into the question be yond saying that Young met with Terzi because he was seeking a postponement on a Security Council resolution dealing with the Palestinian issue.
McHenry claimed that at the time of the Security Council debate last month the PLO appeared to be moving toward the U.S. requirement that it acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and accept Security Council Resolution 242. He said that since Young’s resignation there is more knowledge and sympathy for the Palestinian cause in the U.S.
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