The Soviet Union’s “ambiguous but slowly warming attitude” toward the Palestine guerrillas will be put to the test in the near future when Yasir Arafat, head of the El Fatah and of the Palestine Liberation Organization, visits Moscow, the Christian Science Monitor reported from Beirut. Arafat, who failed in his bid to get massive financial support for the terrorists from the oil-rich Arab countries at the Rabat summit conference, will seek financial and military assistance from the Soviet Union, according to the Monitor’s dispatch from John K. Cooley. Arafat’s talks with the Russians, it quoted pro-guerrilla sources in Beirut as reporting, will “deal with the size of political, military and financial assistance that the Soviet Union may be prepared to extend to the Palestinian revolution.”
In view of the Soviet Union’s professed commitment to the Security Council resolution of Nov. 22, 1967 outlining the basis for settlement of the Mideast conflict, the Russians are expected to avoid full-fledged recognition of Arafat by having the terrorist and his aides received by a Soviet non-governmental “solidarity organization” rather than by the government. Cooley reported marked differences between “Soviet diplomats accredited in Arab capitals, policy-makers in the Kremlin and diplomats engaged in big-power discussions” over policy on the guerrillas. He said “the new Russian-Palestinian contacts may help finally to crystallize the Soviet stand on the guerrillas.”
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