President Reagan expressed his ”sincere condolences” Wednesday to Tunisia for Israel`s deadly air raid on a Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters there as the White House simultaneously deplored and defended the attack.
A senior White House official disclosed that before the raid Tuesday and also before the slaying last week of three Israeli citizens aboard a yacht in Larnaca, Cyprus, Israel had intercepted three boats over the last six months that it said were loaded with PLO terrorists trying to infiltrate Israel. One of the ships was sunk.
The official, speaking on condition that he not be identified, said the ships were on ”operational” missions and that their existence was confirmed independently by U.S. intelligence. He said they were apparently all confronted in Israeli waters, but no locations were disclosed.
The administration`s new stance did nothing to clear up the contradiction between statements made Tuesday by Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz: The President apparently endorsed the attack, while Shultz deplored it and expressed ”opposition to the acts of violence from whatever quarter they come and without respect to what is the presumed rationale for them.”
Meeting three Saudi Arabian diplomats in New York Wednesday, Shultz presented the administration`s view ”with the understanding that there is a cause-and-effect” relationship between earlier terror attacks on the Israelis and the Israeli attack on the PLO, according to a State Department official present at the meeting.
The official said the Saudis were ”shocked” at the raid and ”very uncomfortable” with U.S. attempts to justify it.
Hoping to walk a diplomatic tightrope amid a chorus of condemnations from European allies and Arab capitals, the administration`s response to Israel`s air strike combined support for the principle of striking back at terrorists with a warning that such violent retaliation ”cannot be condoned.”
White House spokesman Larry Speakes stressed that ”no decision” has been made on the question of whether Israel acted legally under the U.S. Export Control Act in its use of U.S.-supplied warplanes for the raid. The law specifies that U.S. arms are only for self-defense.
”We deeply deplore the rising pattern of violence in the region, including the latest incident of the attack on PLO headquarters in Tunis,”
Speakes said in a statement that was also read at the State Department.
”While the resort to violence is deplorable, it is useful to recall the antecedents to this attack, which included repeated attempts to infiltrate terrorists into Israel and the outrageous murder of three Israeli citizens”
in Cyprus last week, Speakes said.
”The air strike, against this background, is understandable as an expression of self-defense. Our distress is especially acute, however, since one act of violence touches off another, and a pattern of escalation is established. Such acts of violence are contrary to our overall objective of a peaceful, stable Middle East, and cannot be condoned.”
The sequence of events that led to Tuesday`s air raid began in April, when Israeli forces sank the ship Atavarius, causing an unknown number of casualties, said the senior White House official.
In an overnight confrontation on Aug. 25 and 26, Israeli forces stopped the ship Castelardit and seized its passengers, the official said. Then, on the night of Aug. 30 and 31, Israeli forces seized the passengers of the ship Ghanda.
It is unclear how many persons were detained, where their boats were intercepted and whether the ships carried weapons, ammunition or other evidence that the passengers were anti-Israeli terrorists. The fate of those seized also is not known.
A group claiming responsibility for the murder of three Israeli citizens last Wednesday–on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar–said it represented the PLO and had executed the three because they were spying on ship traffic between Cyprus and Lebanon. The PLO denied any involvement in the killings.
”You`ve had three ship seizures of alleged infiltrators, alleged terrorists, between April and August, and then you`ve had the Yom Kippur Larnaca incident,” Speakes said. ”And then you`ve had the Israelis strike back. We do not condone acts of violence of any type. But at the same time, you can see what has happened the Middle East. And I think when terrorist incidents of this type stop, then the cycle of violence can be broken.”
Reagan sent a message of condolence to Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba expressing ”our sympathy” and the President`s view that Tunisia is ”a close friend” of the United States, Speakes said.
”We certainly extend our sincere condolences, of the United States government, to the government of Tunisia, over the loss of life of its citizens in the raid,” Speakes said. ”Our sympathies are with the people of Tunisia.” Tunisian officials say 73 people, 12 of them Tunisians, were killed by the air raid Tuesday.
Asked about Reagan`s public commitment, expressed during Bourguiba`s recent visit to Washington, to maintaining Tunisia`s ”territorial integrity” in the face of outside threats, Speakes said, ”We certainly realize that the people of Tunisia do have our deepest sympathy, because people were lost, and it was in their territory.
”But, at the same time, we believe in the right of self-defense against terrorism, wherever terrorists may be, wherever they may be harbored.”
In reference to Tunisian and PLO charges that the U.S. 6th Fleet knew of the attack and traced the Israeli jets by radar but did not inform Tunis, the White House stressed that the United States had no forewarning of the raid.
At the Pentagon, a senior Defense Department official repeated earlier assertions that the United States had no advance warning of the Israeli raid. The official said the Pentagon has yet to learn many details of the raid, but he did disclose that the Israelis used American-supplied F-15 jet fighters on the 3,000-mile round trip. Earlier reports from the Mideast said F-16s were used.
