ARRESTING ARAFAT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100180001-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 29, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 30, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/29: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100180001-2
"PPEAktD ,
A warrant for the PLO chief?
NEW REPUBLIC
30 December 1985
ARRESTING ARAFAT
J UST WHEN the Reagan administration thought it had
hit upon a relatively painless approach to the problem
of international terrorism, it finds itself juggling a hot
potato. The new approach consists of treating terrorism as
simple criminality and pursuing terrorists with the instru-
ments of law enforcement. The hot potato is the proposal
now bouncing around somewhere between the State and
Justice departments to seek the arrest of Yasir Arafat.
There is considerable circumstantial evidence that Ara-
fat was complicit in the hijacking of the Achille Lauro: he
supplies funds to Abul Abbas's Palestine Liberation Front,
and he conferred with PLF leaders several times during
the weeks that the hijacking was being prepared. But this
is not the crime for which the U.S. government is consid-
ering trying to arrest him. Instead, the State Department is
reexamining the case of the murder of two American dip-
lomats in Khartoum in 1973.
The reexamination has been spurred both by the new
interest in using legal instruments against terrorism and
by revelations that U.S. intelligence possesses a taped
intercept of Arafat personally ordering the Khartoum
murders. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Vernon
Walters recently confirmed in an interview with journalist
Edwin Black that when he was deputy director of the CIA_
in 1973 he had been told of the existence of such a tape.
Although he had not heard the tape himself (Arabic being
one of those languages that the multilingual Walters does
not speak), he said that the existence of the tape "was
common knowledge at the time among all sorts of people
in the government."
A warrant for Arafat is not likely to lead to his arrest. It
would serve, though, to keep him out of the United States,
and thus away from the U.N. In theory, it could also keep
him out of countries that have extradition treaties with the
United States, although judging from Italy's refusal to
hold Abbas-a much smaller fish-it is hard to imagine
that many of our allies would arrest Arafat on our behalf.
The more important consequences would be symbolic. A
warrant would signal the end of the notion that Arafat can
be transformed into a genuine peacemaker. And because
it would dismay some U.S. allies, it would show that the
administration is willing to incur diplomatic costs in the
interests of a serious counterterrorist policy.
THE KILLINGS in Khartoum occurred after -eight ter-
rorists seized hostages at a reception at the Saudi Ara-
bian Embassy. The eight, who identified themselves as
members of "Black September," demanded the release
from prison of Sirhan Sirhan, the Baader-Meinhof gang,
and a group of Fatah members being held in Jordan. When
their demands were not met, the terrorists selected the
three Westerners among the hostages-U.S. Ambassador
Cleo Noel, Charge d'Affaires George C. Moore, and Bel-
gian diplomat Guy Eid-and methodically machine-
gunned them after first allowing them to write farewell
notes to their families and then beating them.
A day later, the terrorists surrendered to Sudanese au-
thorities after a lengthy round of transoceanic communica-
tions involving, among others, Arafat and the vice presi-
dent of Sudan. Sudanese President Gaafar Mohammed
Nimeiri, who took the operation as a galling affront to
Sudanese dignity, went public at once with evidence
showing that it had been run out of the Khartoum office of
Fatah. The top Fatah official in Khartoum had fled for
Libya the morning after the seizure, leaving behind in his
desk drawer a written copy of the plans for the operation.
His number two led the assault on the embassy.
It also soon emerged in numerous news reports that the
command center for the operation was in Beirut, whence
were transmitted both the order to kill the three diplomats
and the subsequent order to surrender. Indeed, according
to the Sudanese government, when the "executions"
were not carried out promptly on deadline, a prodding
message was transmitted: "What are you waiting for?"
A month later the Washington Post reported that Arafat
"was in the Black September radio command center in
Beirut when the message to execute three Western diplo-
mats ... was sent out last month, according to western
intelligence sources." The Post reported that "Arafat's
voice was reportedly monitored and recorded." The Post
said that according to its sources it was unclear whether
Arafat himself, or his deputy, Abu Iyad, "gave the order
to carry out the executions.... But they have reports that
Arafat was present in the operations center when the mes-
sage was sent and that he personally congratulated the
guerrillas after the execution...."
The story, which was denied by a spokesman for Arafat,
made less impact then than it might today because Arafat
had yet to achieve the kind of respectability that he en-
joyed after 1974, when the Arab League declared the PLO
"the sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian peo-
ple and when Arafat made his triumphant appearance at
the U.N. General Assembly.
And, in the avalanche of news on the Watergate scan-
dals, the Arafat/Khartoum story was largely forgotten un-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/29: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100180001-2
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/29: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100180001-2
til this year when the Reagan administration announced
its new antiterrorism strategy, a strategy that at first
seemed little more than a face-saving gesture. The admin-
istration hardly seemed serious when it announced after
this summer's TWA hijacking that it had identified the
individual perpetrators and was taking a warrant for their
arrest. After all, any extradition request to Lebanon would
have to be addressed to that nation's justice minister,
Nabih Berri, the very man who had negotiated on behalf
of the hijackers. But a few months later, when U.S. jets
intercepted the four Achille Lauro hijackers over the Medi-
terranean and the U.S. government sought to secure cus-
tody from Italy of Abul Abbas, the policy began to look
more substantial.
That, and rumors about the existence of the Arafat tape,
about which Ambassador Walters subsequently con-
firmed his secondhand knowledge, inspired Charles Li-
chenstein, who served as a deputy U.S. representative to
the U.N. under Jeane Kirkpatrick, to press the administra-
tion for legal action. Lichenstein, now a senior fellow at
the Heritage Foundation, says, "Yasir Arafat is a criminal
under both international law and U.S. law, and I believe
he should be both identified and dealt with as a criminal."
The Justice Department says only that it has the matter
"under review." Lichenstein, who has been pressing the
matter for weeks, says that though he "remain[s] hopeful"
about governmental action, "I'm not holding my breath."
The Justice Department will not only evaluate the strength
of the legal case against Arafat, it will also solicit the views
of the State Department, whose Near East Bureau is sure to
oppose action against Arafat. The bureau, which has day-
to-day management of the American-sponsored Middle
East peace process, has been working on the assumption
that Arafat and the PLO must eventually play a part in it.
Lichenstein urges that if the case against Arafat is legally
sound, the administration should pursue it "on princi-
ple." But he also denies that a conflict exists between the
demands of principle and those of diplomacy. He ac-
knowledges that the governments of Jordan and Egypt
demand a role for the PLO in the peace process, but he
says that those governments need "to come to grips with
the fact that Arafat is a terrorist," and that even if Arafat
wished to, "he cannot deliver the PLO" on behalf of
peace. The PLO, he says, "is not the key to peace, but the
greatest obstacle to it."
In a recent interview with Insight magazine, Arafat, with
customary exaggeration, said about the Israeli raid on his
Tunis headquarters, "I can't forget that the American ad-
ministration, the American president himself declared his
blessing to kill me." The question Lichenstein is raising is
whether the president should forget that Arafat himself
declared his blessing, and more, on the killing of two
American diplomats.
JOSHUA MURAVCHIK
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/29: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100180001-2