Vice Premier Shimon Peres advised the Palestine Liberation Organization Thursday to let residents of the administered territories find their own representatives.
This was the most senior and immediate Israeli reaction to reports from Washington that Secretary of State James Baker was pressing Israel to negotiate eventually with the PLO.
Baker told a congressional panel Tuesday that it may one day be necessary for Israel to talk with the PLO. But Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens said the same day that the subject did not come up in his talks Monday with Baker, President Bush and other administration officials.
Peres, who heads the Labor Party, maintained Thursday that Jordan is still in the negotiating picture, because of the many Palestinians living there. Labor has long advocated negotiations with a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation.
Housing Minister David Levy of Likud, who holds the rank of deputy prime minister, on Thursday rejected outright the idea that Israel would one day talk with the PLO.
“What do we have to talk to them about — the weather?” he asked during a visit to Lod.
Levy said the Israeli people are not interested in committing suicide and therefore Israel will not discuss with the PLO the only issue the PLO wants to raise — the creation of a Palestinian state. That, he said, “would present a grave danger to the existence of the state.”
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