Sen. George McGovern (D.SD) has relayed word to his office at the Capitol that he has not made any of the statements attributed to him on his meeting with PLO chief Yasir Arafat, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was told today by a press aide to McGovern. The aide said that according to McGovern “any statements attributed to him regarding his meeting with Arafat are not reliable because he has made no statement.”
The aide also said the questions attributed to the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee in 1972 by Middle East media are “incorrect.” McGovern, he said, does not plan to make “any official statement” about his Middle East travels until he returns to Washington April 9 and holds a news conference. Israel will be the last stop on his tour. He will be there April 6-8.
According to the aide, McGovern spoke with an administrative official in his office here early yesterday regarding news reports concerning his 90-minute meeting with Arafat in Beirut including one by the Palestinian news agency WAFA that “American policy should take into serious consideration the question of recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
U.S. REPORTERS NOT PRESENT
McGovern also was quoted by the Beirut newspaper, An Nahar, as saying it was “imperative for some kind of Palestinian national entity to emerge because it is difficult to achieve stability in the area unless the Palestinians exercise an efficient political existence.”
“These reports include statements I did not make. They put words in my mouth,” McGovern’s press aide reported the Senator as saying. The aide stressed that the half dozen American media persons in McGovern’s entourage were not permitted to attend the Arafat-McGovern meeting and only Lebanese newsmen were allowed to be present. Traveling as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on Middle Eastern Affairs, McGovern included Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Iran and Lebanon on his tour.
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