ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 2, 1996 TAG: 9605020057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Accorded a statesman's welcome by President Clinton, Yasser Arafat lashed out at Israel on Wednesday for keeping its borders closed to Palestinian workers, then picked up a $20 million World Bank loan to help them.
The PLO leader accused Israel of applying ``collective guilt'' for a series of suicide bombings. The effect of the travel restrictions, he said, has been to deprive 120,000 Palestinians of their jobs and prevent export of their goods. ``We are losing about $6 million a day from this closure,'' he said.
By day's end, he had arranged the $20 million World Bank loan to help pay for 40 projects.
Earlier in the Oval Office, Clinton praised Arafat for acting ``under difficult circumstances'' to persuade the Palestine Liberation Organization's policy-making body to remove clauses in its 32-year-old charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.
Arafat has come to the White House twice before to sign accords with Israel. This visit was to celebrate the April 24 decision to revoke the PLO charter's armed-struggle clauses.
Arafat, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was received in the Oval Office with the recognition and dignity reserved for respected leaders.
``I am delighted to have this opportunity,'' Clinton told him.
Arafat affirmed his confidence that Palestinians will have a state by 2000. ``Yes, yes, yes,'' he said at a news conference. ``No doubt it is coming. No one can hide the sun with his fingers.''
Asked whether the PLO has given up its dream of taking all of Palestine, Arafat said, ``This is an unfair question.''
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres had pre-election meetings with Clinton on Sunday and Tuesday; Wednesday it was Arafat's turn to pose in the Oval Office, in an extraordinary symbolic transformation for a man who once wore his pistol to the United Nations and led an umbrella movement responsible for the deaths of hundreds in bombings and hijackings and even for the slaying of Israeli Olympic athletes.
He told President Clinton that severe poverty reduces the chances of Palestinian tranquility and makes a lasting peace with Israel more difficult.
``I will speak frankly,'' Arafat later told reporters. ``Can you live easily and freely when your neighbor is facing starvation? Definitely not. It is an appeal from me to all the donors not to leave us alone.''
In 45-minute private talks, President Clinton agreed to establish a joint commission for studying economic problems of the West Bank and Gaza and promised to step up efforts to persuade other countries to make good on promises of almost $2 billion in aid.
``Our Palestinian people are facing a very serious economic siege,'' Arafat said. ``Israel's military occupation destroyed the infrastructure of Palestine.''
The spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, Gadi Baltiansky, said later that his government has no intention of damaging the livelihood of Palestinians. ``The closure was a measure we had to take in order to prevent more terrorist attacks of the kind we suffered only a few weeks ago,'' he said. ``Since then, we eased the closure and we will continue to do so, according to our security needs.''
Generally, Arafat spoke warmly of Peres and of his peacemaking partner, Peres' predecessor Yitzhak Rabin. He called the assassinated prime minister a cousin.
But Arafat several times deplored steps taken by Peres to try to screen out infiltrators, principally sealing of the borders with territory controlled by Arafat's Palestinian Authority. ``I hope Israel will reduce its collective punishment against our people,'' he said.
Arafat said Israel should combat terror by complying with U.N. resolutions that demanded its withdrawal from land the Arabs lost in the 1967 and 1973 Middle East wars.
``We are not looking for the moon,'' he said.
In talks with Israel due to open Sunday, the Palestinian Authority, which controls Gaza and all but one of the West Bank's centers of population, will push for nationhood with its capital in Jerusalem.
Clinton declined to get in the middle of the dispute. ``I believe that those matters are going to have to be worked out by the parties in the region,'' he said.
White House spokesman David Johnson said the Israeli-Palestinian talks ``will not go like lightning. Things take time in the Middle East.''
Summing up Arafat's visit, Johnson said: ``The real significant aspect of this meeting is it took place. The extraordinary has become the ordinary.''
Israel's ruling Labor party last week dropped its opposition to a Palestinian state. Clinton did not repeat U.S. policy against statehood or his own stand four years ago that Jerusalem should be recognized as Israel's capital.
Arafat was driven to the White House in a black Cadillac limousine. His beard, a feature in editorial cartoons for years, was trimmed, his checkered Arab headdress in place.
The Clinton administration has pledged a half-billion dollars over five years to help the Palestinian Authority build the underpinnings of a democratic society. So far, $175 million has been delivered.
The New York Times and Knight-Ridder/Tribune contributed to this report.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Yasser Arafat\Welcomed in White House. color.by CNB