Dutch Foreign Minister Has Two-hour Meeting with Arafat

— Foreign Minister Christoph van der Klaauw returned from his visits to Syria and Lebanon Sunday, the most provocative aspect of which was his two-hour meeting in Damascus with Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat and his PLO lieutenants. The Dutch diplomat, who made that contact in his capacity of chairman of the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community (EEC) which seeks to have the PLO “associated” with the Middle East peace process, was accompanied by a delegation from The Netherlands Foreign Ministry.

Van der Klaauw had little to say to reporters about his conversation with Arafat except that it had been useful but yielded no new elements. A PLO spokesman was less reticent. He told reporters in Damascus that Arafat had informed van der Klaauw that the PLO will not negotiate on the basis of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and that it is not prepared to recognize Israel even if it withdraws to its pre-1967 borders.

According to the spokesman, Arafat is willing to accept Israel only within the borders allotted to it by the UN General Assembly’s partition resolution of November 29, 1947 and only if all Palestinians are given the right to return to their homeland in what was Palestine at that time. Arafat was said to expect little from the European Middle East initiative but favored reviving the Geneva conference under the joint chairmanship of the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Van der Klaauw also met with President Elias Sarkis of Lebanon and visited, as Foreign Minister, the Dutch contingent of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). He praised the Dutch soldiers and, on his departure from Beirut, strongly criticized Israeli attacks on south Lebanon. A four-member Dutch parliamentary delegation, which also visited Lebanon at the same time, urged Israel to restrain the activities of Maj. Saad Haddad’s Christian militia.