Report Egyptian Effort to Initiate U.s.-plo Dialogue Has Met with Some Success

Egyptian efforts to initiate a dialogue between the United States and the PLO met with some success last week, according to a report by the official Middle East News Agency (MENA).

The report, published Saturday, quotes Egyptian Foreign Minister Kamal Hassan Ali as saying that as a result of his talks in Washington November 12, where he briefed the Reagan Administration on his earlier meeting with PLO officials in Paris, “The PLO representative in Washington was contacted several times” in an effort to become acquainted with the organization’s position on efforts toward a Middle East peace settlement.

But the report fell short of stating that U.S. officials made the contact. The Reagan Administration recently denied on assertion in the Israeli press that U.S. officials were holding indirect contacts with the PLO through representatives of certain Arab countries.

EGYPT MOVES CLOSER TO PLO

Meanwhile, Egypt and the PLO took another step toward a rapprochement between them, as Foreign Minister Ali met with a visiting PLO delegation yesterday. Ahmed Dajani, who headed the PLO delegation, told reporters following the meeting that Yasir Arafat was planning a visit to Egypt as part of a tour of several Arab states. But he said no date had been set.

PLO and Egyptian officials have been quoted frequently over the past month as confirming that a visit to Cairo by Arafat would take place. President Hosni Mubarak, however, in an interview to be published in the Kuwaiti journal “Al-Siyassa” was quoted yesterday by MENA as saying that if Arafat wanted to come to Cairo, “He should bring with him a scenario for a Middle East peace settlement that I could take to America.”

Mubarak will visit Washington in January. The President also rejected out of hand any future PLO effort to establish a Palestinian broadcasting station in Cairo, saying that “we will not allow any party to mount broadcasting campaigns in Cairo against anyone else.”