President Bush reaffirmed Monday that his administration would not pressure Israel into negotiating with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
“I don’t think it is the role of the United States to force Israel to negotiate with the PLO,” Bush was quoted as saying at a question-and-answer session with newspaper editors.
The PLO has insisted that it have a role in proposed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that the United States is now trying to put together. Israel’s Likud-led government is adamantly against any PLO involvement, whether direct or indirect.
Bush’s comment comes almost exactly one year after his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, decided on Dec. 14, 1988, to open a dialogue with the PLO, to be conducted by the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia.
At their most recent meeting in Tunis last Saturday, the United States asked the PLO what it “might be able to do to help defuse” the ongoing civil war in Lebanon, a State Department official said Tuesday.
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