Three PLO Members Get Visas to Attend Conference in U.S.

Three members of the Palestine Liberation Organization have been granted visas to attend a conference in New York this weekend, the State Department said Wednesday.

“None of the three have any record of personal involvement in terrorist activity,” department spokesman Charles Redman said. He said all three had previously received visas for conferences, and that one had studied here.

Redman identified the three as Nabil Shaath, a senior adviser to PLO leader Yasir Arafat and a member of the Palestine National Council’s political committee; Afif Shaath, the PLO’s representative in the Netherlands; and Noha Nicholas Tadros, who was later identified as a Lebanese woman who used to work for the PLO mission to the United Nations.

Israel, meanwhile, has banned Mustafa Natshe, the deposed mayor of Hebron, from traveling to the United States for the conference, according to news reports from Jerusalem.

Earlier this week, the United States granted a visa to Palestinian activist Faisal al-Husseini, director of the Arab Studies Center in Jerusalem, to also attend the conference, which will be held at Columbia University.

Redman said Tuesday that Husseini, who was recently released from an Israeli prison, “is not a PLO member and therefore does not require a waiver” from the 1974 law barring members of the PLO from entering the United States.

He said Wednesday that the law allows the attorney general to issue waivers on the recommendation of the secretary of state, which was done in this case.

The conference is sponsored by the university; Al-Fajr, an Arabic pro-PLO newspaper in Jerusalem; New Outlook, an Israeli left-wing magazine; American Friends of Peace Now; and the American Council for Palestinian Affairs.