Word: visaed
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Despite the nervous mirth, the vote was thoroughly earnest. By a resounding count of 151 to 2, the U.N. deplored the U.S. refusal to grant a visa to Yasser Arafat so that he could address the General Assembly. The Arab- sponsored resolution gave Washington 24 hours to "reconsider and reverse" its decision. As expected, Secretary of State George Shultz, who made the decision in the first place, refused to yield, reasserting that Arafat, as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was an "accessory" to terrorism and consequently barred under American law from entering the U.S. Two days later the General...
...West Bank and Gaza Strip. That uprising, more than any other event, has thrust the Palestinian issue to the forefront of the international agenda. Just as repressive Israeli measures altered some perceptions about the Palestinians and generally bolstered international sympathy for their cause, Shultz's refusal to grant a visa put Arafat in the headlines and renewed debate on whether the U.S. should acknowledge the P.L.O. as the sole representative of the Palestinian people...
...Arafat's presence would endanger national security was, as put forward by the State Department, self-contradictory. It was based on an ambiguously worded U.S. law that, according to Shultz, conditions the Headquarters Agreement on a U.S. right "to safeguard its own security." Shultz's statement denying Arafat's visa asserted that P.L.O. members were excluded from the U.S. "by virtue of their affiliation in an organization which engages in terrorism." One paragraph later, the statement pointed out that since visas are routinely issued to members of the P.L.O. permanent observer mission at the U.N., Arafat's group had "ample...
...that Arafat would be watched by U.S. security agents, if only for his own protection, the invocation of a security risk was, as a British diplomat put it, "nonsensical." Many diplomats were no less disturbed by the inconsistency of the U.S. position, noting that Arafat had been granted a visa to address the U.N. in 1974 at a time when his agenda was far more radical...
...been able to turn the tables on the U.S., making American diplomacy seem reactive, unimaginative, even recalcitrant. Mired in "old thinking," the U.S. has been on the defensive at the U.N. of late, especially in the wake of Secretary of State George Shultz's refusal to grant a visa that would have permitted Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to address the world body at its headquarters on the East River...