Special Interview Church Rejects PLO Moves to Become Acceptable to the U.S.

Idaho’s Senator Frank Church, the most senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after chairman John Sparkman of Alabama, is wary of the flood of statements and activities related to the Arab-Israeli conflict and will not comment on them yet except on one major matter. On the Palestine Liberation Organization’s efforts to become acceptable to the United States, he is firmly negative.

“I have always said the Palestine question has to be settled in a peace conference,” Church said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Who should represent the Palestinian people is a very sensitive matter. Terrorist groups are hardly qualified to pose as governments, in or out of exile.”

In recent weeks, the PLO has thrown up hints that it may become a provisional government and consider Israel’s existence “in Palestine” if the PLO is seated in a peace conference equal to other participants. The United States has insisted it will not accept the PLO as a party to negotiations until it recognizes Israel’s sovereignty within UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 which the terrorist organization continues to oppose.

Church said he will not comment “right now” on other aspects of the Middle East political process pending his close study of their meaning. His position is much like that being taken within both the Ford Administration and by the principals in the incoming Carter Administration.

The interview was sought with Church in the light of the PLO moves, Egypt’s view that the U.S. is obliged to provide it with weapons, and its call for a conference that it says would bring non-belligerency in the Near East, the Syrian-Saudi Arabian-Egyptian “unity” of Arab “moderates” towards negotiation for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories.

SEES USSR RENEGING ON HELSINKI

On human rights in international affairs and Soviet emigration, Church found the Soviet Union had “solemnly promised” in the Helsinki accords of August, 1975 to adhere to the right of emigration which, he said, “surely include Russian Jews” but “the evidence is that rather than opening doors, the Russian government has tended to pull them more closely shut.”

“The United States should give emphasis and publicity to the failure of the Russians to adhere to the Helsinki agreement and should endeavor to get other governments to do the same,” he said. “In this way, we don’t have to rely on citizen groups to protest, although that is very helpful.” He stressed that “expressions” by the government “would add to the moral force that could be brought to bear on the Soviet Union.”

Recalling President-elect Jimmy Carter’s recent remarks. Church said he has “reasons to hope” that the Carter Administration will attach “greater importance to basic human rights” in its international operations–a point Secretary of State-designate Cyrus Vade department in his first remarks after his appointment.

SUGGESTS ALTERNATIVE TO J-V AMENDMENTS

Church, who delivered a major address at the Second Brussels Conference for Soviet Jewry last spring. has reiterated that the Jackson-Vanik provisions of the Trade Reform Act has “failed to work” and suggested its disappearance when the act expires in 1980. He urged “an alternative course” that would arouse a maximum effort of public opinion “as expressed by citizen conclaves and governments” to “persuade the Russians that it would be in their own interest to begin opening the gate (of emigration) again.”

It would be a “mistake” to continue the Jackson-Vanik provisions because “this kind of approach has proved counter-productive,” he said, a reference to the drop in Soviet Jewish emigration from the high mark of about 35,000 in 1974 to an average of about 12,000 in each of the last two years.

“On the other hand,” Church added, “Congress must exercise oversight on how detente is implemented.” He warned against “ideals” such as the proposal by American corporations for the U.S. to lend the Soviet Union seven or eight billion dollars for development projects near Moscow and in Siberia, respectively.

In this connection, he noted, the provision he authored in the Export-Import Bank Act that limits U.S. credits to $40 million for such projects, The limitation, he said, is designed to block use of U.S. taxes by private companies for Soviet development of resources the Soviet Union could “at any time” divert from the U.S.