Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat “is dying to meet with me,” Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir claimed Tuesday.
Shamir said he has rejected “almost daily” proposals to meet with the PLO chairman, because “Arafat is not interested in peace.”
According to Shamir, “his objective in proposing a meeting with me is to hoodwink the rest of the world and persuade the Americans to increase their contacts with the PLO.”
The prime minister, who spoke to reporters during a tour of northern Israel, refused to say how Arafat’s requests for a meeting were relayed to him.
But he made clear that under no circumstances would he ever talk to the “murderous PLO or its leader, Arafat.”
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