Two Senators to Introduce Bill That Will Monitor PLO Activities

Two senators plan to introduce a bill Tuesday that would require the Bush administration to report every four months on Palestine Liberation Organization activities, as long as the United States continues its dialogue with the PLO.

Sens. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) said they do not oppose the U.S. decision last December to begin its dialogue with the PLO, and do not see the bill as a first step in ending that dialogue.

“We are trying to put a positive approach on this, that in fact there is now a dialogue, that there has been a positive statement on the part of Mr. Arafat,” Mack said. There is a need for more “positive actions” by the PLO, he said.

“We are basically asking the PLO and Mr. Arafat to put their actions where his mouth has been,” Lieberman said. PLO factions “are still committing terrorist acts against Israel which Mr. Arafat has not renounced.”

Israel cannot be expected, Lieberman said, “to go further with regard to the PLO until the PLO does more itself such as removing from its charter its plan to destroy Israel.

“Those steps will lead to trust that can lead to peace,” Lieberman said.

Besides requiring Bush to tell Congress of any PLO plans to repeal sections of its covenant, the bill would ask Bush to report, “in unclassified from, to the maximum extent practicable,” on.

Any PLO endorsement or participation in attacks against Israel.

The PLO position toward prosecution or extradition of “known terrorists.”

The PLO position on its “strategy of stages, whereby it seeks to use a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza as the first step in the total elimination of the State of Israel.”

The PLO position toward, and any involvement in, violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

THREATENING PALESTINIANS

The extent to which the PLO threatens Palestinians from the territories who seek peace with Israel.

Any PLO attempts to evict or otherwise discipline members involved in terrorist acts.

Whether Force 17 and the Hawari group, PLO units that have carried out terrorist attacks, have been disbanded.

Whether the PLO has called on any Arab state to recognize and enter direct negotiations with Israel or to end economic boycotts of Israel.

A House version of the bill will likely be introduced by Rep. Mel Levine (D-Calif.).

Mack said he did not know of any co-sponsors to the bill nor did he know of any opposition, adding, “This proposal is supported by AIPAC,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

An AIPAC source, while objecting to Mack’s mentioning of his group, which tries to maintain a low public profile, nevertheless confirmed that AIPAC supports the amendment.

Before a Friday meeting with Shamir on Capitol Hill, Mack told reporters that the Bush administration’s meetings during the week with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir were “helpful.”

“The only nuance that might have changed would have been really to have placed a little more pressure on Mubarak to go back and have him encourage the other Arab nations to make positive statements about their willingness to recognize Israel’s right to exist,” he added.