Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat had a 20-minute private audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican today. There was no immediate statement issued but a Vatican source was reported to have said later that the encounter changes the political status of the PLO.
Shortly after the meeting, the Pope issued a strong appeal for the internationalization of Jerusalem, a position long held by the Vatican.” Jerusalem is the city of God., Jerusalem can also become the city of man in which the believers of the three great monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam live in full liberty and equality with the followers of other religious communities,” the Pope declared.
The highly controversial meeting was conducted under maximum security conditions. Arafat entered and left the Vatican by a seldom used side door. The Pope flew to Rome from his summer retreat at Castel Gondolfo.
Earlier today, Arafat addressed the 69th Inter-parliamentary Union meeting’s opening session here, urging it to create a commission to investigate Israel’s “war crimes” in Lebanon. He claimed that some 70,000 people were killed, wounded or missing since Israel invaded Lebanon June 6.
According to the PLO leader, Israel embarked on the Lebanese operation to create a new strategic map of the Middle East favorable to its interests and in the process, to wipe out the Palestinian people.
At a later press conference, Arafat claimed the assassination at Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel in Beirut yesterday was “a provocation by the Americans and Israel so that the Israelis could enter Beirut.”
The Pope’s decision to receive Arafat raised a storm of protest from Israel and from Jewish organizations and leaders around the world when it was first announced last week. It also put a severe strain on Vatican-Israel relations.
VATICAN’S RATIONALE FOR MEETING
The Vatican reacted with unprecedented anger Monday to remarks by an un-named senior Israeli official in Jerusalem accusing the then Pope and the Catholic Church of silence while the Nazis massacred European Jewry during World War II. The official observed that now the Pope has agreed to meet Arafat “who wants to destroy Israel and thus complete the work of the Nazis.”
The Vatican denounced the charge as “an outrage against truth” and on insult to the person of the Pope.
Observers here noted today that the Pope believes in dialogue, even with so-called “enemies”; that he received leaders of totalitarian regimes as well as of democracies, and even representatives of countries not formally recognized by the Vatican — a case in point being Israel. Among Israeli leaders received by the Pope in the past have been the late Premier Golda Meit, the late Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and former Foreign Minister Abba Eban, now a leading Labor Alignment Knesset member.
The observers stressed that receiving a PLO leader does not mean the Vatican is ready to recognize the PLO. Arafat was not the first PLO man to meet with the Pope. Forouk Kaddumi, the PLO’s foreign affairs spokesman, was received at the Vatican some time ago.
(In New York City, more than 500 students from Yeshiva University and the Stern College for Women, which is affiliated with the university, demonstrated for some 90 minutes to protest the Pope-Arafat meeting. The demonstration, across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, was sponsored by the Student Association of Stern College, according to Rabbi Avraham Weiss, a teacher at the college who also participated in the rally.)
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