Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has publicly given her fellow ministers carte blanche to hold talks with Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat or with other PLO representatives.
Answering a question in Parliament last Thursday, she said that while there were no immediate plans for Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington to meet Arafat, it might be necessary for him to meet PLO representatives later this year when Britain will hold the presidency of the European Economic Community (EEC).
Since the PLO would simultaneously hold the presidency of the Arab League, she was inferring that a ministerial meeting with the PLO chief would take place in the context of the Euro-Arab dialogue. Although there have already been numerous official contacts between Britain and the PLO they have not yet been at such a high level.
STRONG PROTESTS BY JEWISH COMMUNITY
Mrs. Thatcher’s statement, virtually confirming that a Carrington-Arafat meeting is inevitable, will trigger strong protests by the Jewish community. Greville Janner, MP, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, has called a meeting of the communal leadership to consider her statement.
The Israeli Embassy has commented angrily on the disclosure that Benjamin Strachan, the British Ambassador to Lebanon, had a 20-minute meeting with Arafat in Beirut last Monday. The Embassy accused British diplomats of “consorting with assassins.”
Israel is already at loggerheads with Britain over her leadership of the so-called European initiative on the Middle East. Despite widespread public distrust of the PLO, the most influential British newspapers, such as The Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times, support the European call for involving the PLO in Middle East peace negotiations.
But they also recognize that Israel’s Labor Party seems as strongly opposed to PLO participation as is the present Israeli government.
PLO PLANS TO OPEN OFFICE IN DUBLIN
Meanwhile, the London PLO representative, Nabil Ramlawi, has announced that he plans to open a PLO office in Dublin, capital of the Irish Republic. The Irish Foreign Ministry said it could not prevent such on office being opened but that did not mean it would give the PLO diplomatic recognition. The Israel Embassy in London, which also serves Dublin, has voiced its concern to the Irish authorities.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
