6 Syrian-Backed PLO Factions Unite in Anti-Arafat Coalition

DAMASCUS, Syria —  Six Syrian-backed guerrilla groups within the Palestine Liberation Organization said Monday that they have united in a “Palestine National Salvation Front” to counter the policies of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and to intensify the fight against Israel.

The six groups pledged to “escalate Palestinian armed struggle against Israel from all Arab borders” and sabotage Arafat’s recent agreement with King Hussein of Jordan on a joint approach to peace negotiations with Israel.

Formation of the new anti-Arafat front was announced at a news conference in Damascus by Khaled Fahoum, former chairman of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s so-called parliament in exile. Leaders of the six groups attended the news conference.

Fahoum said the front includes Dr. George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; the PFLP-General Command of Ahmed Jibril; the Saika faction, led by Issam Kadi and Samini Attari; the Palestine Popular Struggle Front, headed by Bahjat abu Garbiyya; the Palestine National Front in the Occupied Territories, and defectors from Arafat’s mainstream Fatah faction led by Col. Abu Moussa.

The agreement by Habash to join the front was considered a victory for the pro-Syrian camp. The Marxist leader, whose guerrillas introduced aircraft hijacking to the Middle East in the late 1960s, has refused in the past to take a public stand against Arafat.

He has tried instead, in cooperation with Nayef Hawatmeh’s pro-Moscow Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to arrange a reconciliation between Arafat and the various dissident PLO factions.

Habash was reportedly angered when Arafat made the deal with Hussein without consulting opposition groups within the guerrilla movement.

Hawatmeh did not join the anti-Arafat front.

Meanwhile, in Amman, the Jordanian capital, Arafat’s chief deputy in the PLO said the organization’s guerrillas are returning to southern Lebanon and attacking the withdrawing Israeli occupation army.

Khalil Wazir, who is also Arafat’s top military aide, said in an interview that 60 PLO guerrillas have been killed fighting the Israelis in southern Lebanon in the last five months.

Wazir confirmed reports that PLO guerrillas are returning to refugee camps in the south from which Israeli forces drove them in the June, 1982, invasion.

“They are returning to their families,” he said, adding that “we have to defend ourselves” against the various Lebanese factions in the south, some of which have been hostile to the PLO in the past.

Most of the attacks on withdrawing Israeli forces in southern Lebanon have been blamed on Shia Muslims, who make up the majority of the south’s population.