Word: fez
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With so much of his guerrilla army now neutralized, if not very satisfactorily, Arafat is addressing himself to another challenge: rebuilding the P.L.O. as a political force. At the recent meeting of the Central Council, he defended his support of the Arab peace plan adopted at Fez, Morocco, in September, as well as his plans for closer relations with Jordan. He is well aware of the rising political power of the West Bank Palestinians, a constituency that is fundamentally at odds with the old-line radicals of the P.L.O. Says a Western diplomat in Damascus: "Arafat has always survived...
...Reagan also had the region's most intractable problem on his mind last week. Three days after his meeting with Gemayel, he received a seven-member Arab delegation, led by King Hassan II of Morocco. The group had been appointed by the Arab summit conference that met at Fez, Morocco, last month to explore Reagan's plan to solve the Palestinian problem by linking the Israeli-occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Jordan. The Arabs at Fez had come closer than ever before to a recognition of Israel's right to exist...
Egypt's President Mubarak and Jordan's King Hussein were more forthcoming last week. The Egyptian President, who was not invited to Fez, said the Arab plan "lacks a mechanism" for achieving its goals, and thus Reagan's proposals are preferable. In an interview with the BBC, Hussein openly declared his willingness to establish "normal relations" with Israel eventually and said of Reagan's plan: "I believe it to be a very constructive and a very positive move, and I would certainly like to see it continue and evolve...
...enthusiasm. Shultz has argued that Jordan and representatives of the West Bank Palestinians must enter the now suspended talks between Israel and Egypt on Palestinian autonomy if Reagan's plan is to have any chance of success. That, said Hussein, Jordan cannot yet do because the Fez summit gave him no mandate to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. Indeed, it reaffirmed a declaration of the 1974 Rabat summit that the P.L.O. is the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people...
...effective support to its Syrian, Iraqi and P.L.O. allies, would certainly jump at any invitation. At a Kremlin dinner last week for President Ali Nasser Mohammed of South Yemen, Brezhnev denounced Reagan's plan as "basically vicious" and put forward one of his own that paralleled the Fez resolutions. Israelis, Arabs and Americans all appraised it, accurately, as containing little...