Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel warned that his country will find a suitable answer to the murder of Israeli diplomat Yaacov Bar-Simantov in Paris last week. In on interview with the West German daily, Die Welt, Shamir asserted that “the answer will come, but not in the same place where the attack took place.” Bar-Simantov, 42, was gunned down by an unidentified woman outside his home. Israel holds the Palestine Liberation Organization responsible for the murder.
Shamir, in his interview, launched an appeal to all European governments “to create conditions” which would substantially limit the activities of the PLO offices in various European capitals. He said that because the PLO offices have diplomatic immunity “international terrorism can almost undisturbed meet all the necessary preparations for its operations. The immunity provides a cover for the subversive activities” in which the PLO is engaged.
According to Shamir, the PLO is the largest world wide terrorist organization. “In its camps in Lebanon terrorists of various nations get military training, arms, forged papers and anything necessary to carry out their missions,” he said. Currently, he noted, there are 2,500 non-Arab terrorists in PLO camps, including Turks, French, Germans and South Americans.
Shamir observed that all the terrorists trained by the PLO were prepared for missions in the Western, democratic world, and not in Communist countries. “This is their operation area,” he said. “They abuse the freedom of the West.”
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