The PLO has agreed to withdraw from the Arab League delegation which is scheduled to meet with U.S. officials at the White House in Washington Friday. Foreign Minister Mohammed Boucetta of Morocco said today in Rabat that “the PLO knows when it is not wanted and has no intention to impose its presence under such conditions.”
Boucetta made it clear that the PLO bowed to what he said was a U.S. veto “in order to enable the delegation to start negotiations in a concrete manner.” The Reagan Administration had made it clear that it would not receive a PLO official.
The Arab League delegation was originally to have included all seven members of the League committee appointed at the Fez summit meeting to work out concrete proposals and submit them to the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The PLO was one of the seven.
Boucetta said the delegation will visit London, Paris, Moscow and Peking at a later date, with the participation of a PLO representative.
France’s Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson last week told PLO chief Yasir Arafat that President Francois Mitterrand is prepared to meet with such a delegation but asked that the PLO be represented by someone else, preferably by the head of its political department, Farouk Kadummi, who has already called on Mitterrand as part of an Arab delegation.
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