President Francois Mitterrand said last night that Israeli Premier Shimon Peres “was far more open” than his predecessors on the Palestinian question but “there has been no similar step forward by Yasir Arafat and the PLO.”
Mitterrand, who met with Peres during the Israeli leader’s three-day State visit to Paris last week, said at a televised press conference that he has no intention to invite Arafat to Paris. “Arafat leads a movement, a clandestine army, not a state,” he said, adding, “I don’t think such a visit would be conducive to peace.”
The French President, whose popularity is at a low ebb according to political commentators, is trying to improve his image by registering gains in foreign policy, particularly the Middle East. He visited Damascus last month where he met with Syrian President Hafez Assad.
“All concerned, Peres as well as Jordan’s King Hussein said they considered my meeting with Assad to be a good thing,” Mitterrand told the press conference.
He sought to deflect criticism in some quarters that he is too partial toward Israel by recalling that France had saved Arafat and 4,000 of his men when they were under seige in Beirut in the summer of 1982 and again a year later when they were cornered by anti-Arafat PLO dissidents in Tripoli, northern Lebanon.
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