Blaming PLO, Hussein Halts Peace Initiative

AMMAN, Jordan —  King Hussein, accusing the Palestine Liberation Organization of reneging on secret promises, announced Wednesday that he is halting political coordination with the PLO and suspending a yearlong joint effort to seek peace with Israel.

“Thus comes to an end another chapter in the search for peace,” Hussein declared in a dramatic three-hour-long televised address.

However, Hussein stopped short of severing relations with the PLO and said he is willing to resume cooperation with its leaders at “such time as their word becomes their bond.”

No Separate Pact

He also said that, despite his falling-out with the PLO, Jordan will not seek a separate peace settlement with Israel but will continue to abide by the principles of the year-old Amman accord, the agreement under which he and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat embarked on the joint peace initiative last February.

But the Jordanian monarch indicated that this initiative is, for now at least, at an end because of Arafat’s reluctance to publicly accept key U.N. Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which implicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist.

In the course of a detailed recounting of the peace efforts over the past year, Hussein also disclosed that he received a written commitment from the United States last month agreeing to PLO participation in an international peace conference, provided the guerrilla organization first renounces terrorism and goes “clearly on the public record” as accepting resolutions 242 and 338.

Those requirements long have been Washington’s conditions for dealing with the PLO, but Israel has said there are no conditions under which it would ever deal with the PLO, which it considers a terrorist organization. A U.S. agreement to have the PLO at any peace talks would be an indication that Washington could persuade the Israelis to sit down with PLO representatives.

Change in U.S. Position

Hussein said the U.S. commitment, received Jan. 25 after two days of talks in London with Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy, represented “a significant change” in the U.S. position toward the PLO and was an opportunity to finally convene an international peace conference--”the objective . . . for which we have worked tirelessly for the past nine years.”

He said Arafat balked at accepting the two U.N. resolutions despite his earlier promise that he would do so once the PLO’s role in the negotiations was assured. He said Arafat instead made his acceptance of the resolutions conditional on U.S. endorsement of the Palestinians’ right to “self-determination,” a code phrase generally used to mean statehood.

The United States, Hussein said, rejected this demand.

There was no immediate PLO reaction to the king’s speech, but a senior diplomatic source in Cairo expressed dismay at Hussein’s move and said, “This puts an end to everything.” U.S. State Department officials said they are waiting to see the full text before commenting.

After talks in Amman earlier this month failed to break the deadlock over the conditions under which the PLO would accept the two resolutions, Arafat visited Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak sought to mediate the dispute.

Mubarak sent a high-ranking envoy, presidential adviser Osama Baz, to Amman on Monday to appeal to Hussein to delay his break with Arafat while Egypt sought to draft a compromise formula for PLO acceptance of 242 and 338.

Baz returned to Cairo empty-handed, and the talks between Mubarak and Arafat apparently made little progress by the time the PLO chairman left Egypt on Tuesday for an undisclosed destination.

Hussein’s refusal to allow more time for Egyptian mediation efforts reflected an impatience with the PLO that was clearly apparent in his speech.

Asserting that acceptance of the two resolutions would have “led to a presence and participation by the PLO in an international (peace) conference”--the original objective of the Amman accord--Hussein accused Arafat of “wasting” a golden opportunity after months of painstaking diplomatic efforts on Jordan’s part.

“I and the government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan hereby announce that we are unable to continue to coordinate politically with the PLO leadership until such time as their word becomes their bond, characterized by commitment, credibility and constancy,” the king said.

Arafat’s objection to the two resolutions stems from the fact that they refer to the Palestinians only as refugees without mentioning their demand for “self-determination.”

In the Amman talks that followed the American offer to accept the PLO’s presence at a peace conference in return for acceptance of 242 and 338, Hussein said Arafat presented him with three proposals under which the PLO would agree to embrace the two resolutions. The three proposals were “differently worded” but “one in substance” in asking the United States to acknowledge “the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to self-determination,” Hussein said.

Although this was unacceptable to Washington, the State Department, in an effort to keep the peace process alive at a crucial stage, issued a statement acknowledging that the Palestinian issue “is more than a refugee question” and affirming that future peace negotiations must take “the legitimate rights” of the Palestinians into account.

While Arafat subsequently praised this as a “step forward,” he insisted in his talks with Hussein and Mubarak that he needed an endorsement of Palestinian self-determination in exchange for publicly recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

Although the scenario originally envisioned by the Amman accord--preliminary U.S.-Palestinian talks that were to be followed by Arafat’s acceptance of the two resolutions--never materialized, Hussein maintained that the PLO’s conditions were more than satisfied by Washington’s consent to have the PLO represented at a peace conference.

Disclosing the text of that commitment, Hussein said he received a formal reply from the Reagan Administration on Jan. 25 stating that:

“When it is clearly on the public record that the PLO has accepted resolutions 242 and 338, is prepared to negotiate peace with Israel and has renounced terrorism, the United States accepts the fact that an invitation will be issued to the PLO to attend an international conference. . . . “

Hussein said this commitment should have “met the PLO’s requirements” and, if accepted by Arafat, would have led to “an immediate opening of an American-Palestinian dialogue.”

“We succeeded in achieving what (we) had felt to be impossible. We opened up avenues that had been considered closed to us,” Hussein said. “ . . . We were so close to the finishing line.”