U.S. Still Waiting for Unambiguous Statement on Israel from the PLO

The Reagan administration is looking for a clear, unambiguous statement from Yasir Arafat that the Palestine Liberation Organization recognizes Israel’s right to exist when he addresses the United Nations General Assembly in Geneva on Tuesday.

The PLO chairman is scheduled to address a debate on the Palestinian issue in which he will describe the positions taken at the Palestine National Council’s meeting in Algiers last month, including the declaration of an independent Palestinian state.

The General Assembly moved the Palestinian debate to Geneva from the U.N. headquarters in New York, after U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz denied Arafat a visa to enter the United States.

At a news conference in New York on Wednesday, Shultz again reiterated the U.S. conditions for a dialogue with the PLO. They are: explicit recognition of Israel’s right to exist, acceptance of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and “renunciation of terrorism in all its forms and a pledge not to engage in it.”

Shultz said there seemed to be “some further clarification” of the PLO position in a statement issued Wednesday by Arafat and five American Jews who met in Stockholm.

‘PREPARED FOR SUBSTANTIVE DIALOGUE’

“I welcome that,” Shultz said of the clarification. But he said the Stockholm statement has still not met the U.S. conditions.

“If they meet these conditions, then we’re prepared for a substantive dialogue,” he stressed.

At a news conference in Stockholm after Arafat met with the five Jews, the PLO leader said that the PNC declarations “said clearly there are two states in Palestine, a Palestinian state and a Jewish state.”

The statement issued by Arafat and the five American Jews, all affiliated with the American arm of the Tel Aviv-based International Center for Peace in the Middle East, concluded with the assertion that the Americans felt the U.S. conditions had been met and “there were no further impediments to a direct dialogue between the United States government and the PLO.”

Shultz’s position was reaffirmed Thursday by Richard Murphy, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies here.

“In Stockholm, Arafat took the process another step forward,” Murphy said, “Still, he fell short of the mark. But the progress is in the right direction and again is welcome.”

Murphy also said the PLO’s position on terrorism has been vague and ambiguous. “In this context, we particulary welcome the relative clarity of the language” in the Stockholm statement, which rejected terrorism “in all its forms,” Murphy said. “Let’s hope that performance matches that promise.”

At the State Department Thursday, spokes-woman Phyllis Oakley said that the department knew of the Stockholm meeting in advance, both from the American group and the Swedish government. But she stressed that the State Department was not in any way involved in organizing the conference.