The United States has assured Israel that the Palestine Liberation Organization will not be a participant in the peace negotiations proposed by Secretary of State George Shultz in the letter he presented to Premier Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on March 4.
Peres told the Knesset Wednesday that he received clarifications from U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering of some points in Shultz’s letter that had raised a number of “substantive questions.”
The ambassador assured him that the only reason the secretary of state used the term “parties,” rather than “states,” in connection with peace talks was that the Palestinians could not be related to as a “state,” but only as a “party,” Peres said.
He said Pickering noted that both Security Council Resolution 338 and the Camp David accords refer to “parties,” rather than states, for the same reason. Resolution 338, adopted following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, reaffirms Resolution 242, adopted following the 1967 Six-Day War, which is the basis for Arab-Israeli negotiations accepted by most Arab states and Israel, but not the PLO.
Pickering’s explanation should allay fears that the reference to “parties” was a means of smuggling the PLO into negotiations through the back door, Peres said.
Another question addressed by Pickering related to the possibility that the United Nations secretary general would have no choice but to invite the PLO to the proposed international conference, which would be held under U.N. auspices.
Peres said the American envoy maintained the secretary general is under no obligation to invite the PLO, because all invitees must have accepted Resolutions 242 and 338.
The final question raised by the Israelis concerned Shultz’s stipulation that “the parties to each bilateral negotiation may refer reports on the status of their negotiations to the (international) conference, in a manner to be agreed.”
Israel was apprehensive that this would give the conference an opportunity to interfere in the negotiating process and impose a settlement. But according to Peres, the United States rejected that interpretation. The Americans noted that “the reporting procedure is to be agreed upon by the parties themselves.”
Peres stressed that the Shultz letter “makes it quite clear that there is neither the possibility nor the intention of allowing the conference to impose a settlement or to veto the agreement reached by the parties.”
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