Behind the Headlines Britain and the Mideast

Lord Carrington, former foreign Secretary, is emerging in a new national role as roving Ambassador for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who is trying to assert herself as the country’s foreign policy leader.

This weekend, Carrington was visiting Tunisia and Jordan for consultations about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Last week, he was in Saudi Arabia. His mission follows the recent decision of Mrs. Thatcher to enlist Sir Anthony Parsons, Britain’s former Ambassador at the United Nations, as special adviser on foreign policy.

These moves could have for reaching consequences for Britain’s Middle East policy. Traditionally this has been a preserve of the Foreign Office, which contains a large contingent of diplomats with experience in Arab countries giving it a reputation of favoring the Arabs over the Israelis.

WON’T MEET WITH PLO REPRESENTATIVES

Mrs. Thatcher’s intrusion into Middle East policy recently came into focus with her refusal to meet an Arab League delegation, headed by Morocco’s King Hassan, because of the Arab’s insistence on bringing along Farouk Kaddoumi of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Although Mrs. Thatcher subscribed to the European Economic Community’s Venice Declaration of June, 1980 urging the PLO’s participation in Mideast negotiations, she has ruled out top-level contacts with its representatives as long as the PLO withholds clear recognition of Israel’s right to exist and adheres to a policy of violence.

To the disappointment of the Foreign Office, the Arab League team preferred to stay away rather than bow to Mrs. Thatcher’s conditions. Their visit, already postponed twice, is now being tentatively planned for next February.

Carrington is not Mrs. Thatcher’s only roving Ambassador. Last week Lord Chalfont, another former Foreign Office Minister, went on her behalf to Morocco to try to smooth the ruffled feathers of King Hassan, who was to have headed the Arab mission to London.

The Prime Minister’s determination to supervise foreign policy stemmed from the Falkland Islands conflict last spring. Mrs. Thatcher blamed the Foreign Office for the fact that Britain failed to anticipate the Islands invasion by the Argentine armed forces.

Although Carrington immediately assumed personal blame and resigned as Foreign Secretary, Mrs. Thatcher seems to have regarded him as the victim of his civil servants incompetence and on accepting his resignation had hinted he might be recalled in the future. (A press report this weekend says he might rejoin the government when Mrs. Thatcher next reshuffles her Cabinet.)

THATCHER’S INTERVENTION BENEFITS ISRAEL

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s intervention on Middle East policy is clearly of benefit to the Israelis and Israeli diplomats here have privately welcomed it. Whether or not the Foreign Office’s grip will be permanently weakened may depend on the outcome of the next general election which could be held as early as next June.

There are, however, two other aspects of Mrs. Thatcher’s rebuff to the PLO. One concerns events in Lebanon and the other is domestic British politics.

Despite her initial outrage over Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the ensuing bloodshed, Britain now increasingly recognizes the benefits brought about by the decimation of the Palestinian militias there both to the government of Lebanon and to Jordan as Britain’s favored spokesman of the Palestinians.

On the domestic front, Mrs. Thatcher is aware of the similarities between the PLO and the terrorists in Northern Ireland and the embarrassing inconsistency of holding political discourse with the former while denying it to the latter.

Only last week Mrs. Thatcher’s government barred the leftwing Labor leaders of the Greater London Council from entertaining representatives of the Sinn Fein, the political wing of the provisional IRA. But she could scarcely have done so if she herself had recently consorted with the political wing of the Palestinian terrorists. In this affair, Mrs. Thatcher was weighing not the narrow pros and cons of foreign policy but the broader national interest.