Bold New Stroke for Peace

The Venice summit gives a big boost to the Palestinians

'What is essential is that all efforts should not be contrary to Camp David, nor support Camp David, but be alongside Camp David." So said Italian Premier Francesco Cossiga last week moments after the European Community summit in Venice had unveiled one of the most assertive initiatives that Europe as a whole has undertaken in years. It was no less than a major diplomatic effort to bring its own political force to bear on the search for peace in the Middle East, and to get the long-ostracized Palestine Liberation Organization into the peace process.

The Community's declaration, issued at the close of the two-day summit, had four main thrusts. First, it declared that "the Palestinian people must be placed in a position to exercise fully their right to self-determination." It also asserted that the P.L.O. "will have to be associated" with any peace settlement. Further, it called for the creation of a European fact-finding mission--probably of Cabinet-level membership--to determine the positions of the adversaries in the region and explore possible new avenues of negotiation. Finally, even though it carefully upheld Israel's unquestioned "right to secure borders," it sharply castigated Israel for establishing "illegal" settlements in the occupied West Bank, a process it called "a serious obstacle to peace."

In terms of the Atlantic Alliance--already ailing from a series of recent blows --the European action is bound to pose a new political challenge for President Carter when he meets the European leaders at the industrial countries' economic summit at the same site in Venice this weekend. For the moment, however, the U.S. reaction was relatively sanguine. That was only out of a sense of relief, because the European initiative could have been stronger. In Washington, within hours of the summit, Secretary of State Edmund Muskie expressed a conciliatory view of the European action. "I do not see anything on its face which directly challenges the Camp David process," he said. As for its most sensitive point--the invitation for the P.L.O. to be "associated" in any peacemaking--Muskie said that it seemed to be implicit that the Europeans were talking about a future time when the P.L.O. might have renounced its commitment to seek the destruction of Israel. And at such a time, he said, reiterating long-standing U.S. policy, it would indeed be acceptable to give the P.L.O. a role in peace negotiations. Thus, he concluded, "the ball is now in the P.L.O.'s court."

Egypt said it welcomed the European initiative. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Butros Ghali called the principles contained in the Venice declaration "compatible" with the Camp David accords and said: "We have no objection to any contacts the Europeans may seek in the common quest for peace." That left Israel, which, to no one's surprise, bluntly rejected the European action, especially the gesture toward the P.L.O. "It is certainly not a constructive act that can be conducive to peace," snapped a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official. "It can only complicate the peace process." Palestinian reaction was cautious. Said P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat: "Partly positive, partly lacking."

"Well, they went ahead and did it," said one White House aide, "but it sure could have been worse." In fact, the declaration fell far short of an earlier proposal by some of the Europeans to amend U.N. Resolution 242; instead of referring to the Palestinians as refugees, a new version of the resolution would have effectively recognized their right to a homeland. Before the summit, President Carter had warned the Europeans that the U.S. would veto any such measure. The President was concerned that an initiative of that sort could jeopardize the Camp David peace process and cause Israel to pull out of the stalled talks on Palestinian autonomy. For the same reasons, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had also asked the Community to reconsider.

The European leaders accordingly backed off. But they nonetheless felt compelled to make their position clear in terms of what they perceive as dangerously rising tensions in the Middle East and, particularly, the impasse they suspect is being caused by election-year politics in the U.S. Explained British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, obviously trying to soften the seeming rebuke to Carter: "We really are trying to supplement what the U.S. is doing, to do something very, very positive--to stop talking just in a few abstract terms and try to clothe those terms with practical reality. And we'll do it, as always, in partnership."

The vigor of the European Community's initiative contrasted with the almost surreal serenity of the summit's site in the historic center of Venice. The statesmen were as enchanted with the beguiling city as countless ordinary tourists before them. French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing went for a brisk ride up the Grand Canal in his motor launch, the Ile de France. Thatcher, still clad in a flowing evening gown, stole out of her hotel at 2 a.m. for a stroll beneath the stars. Mindful of threats from the terrorist Red Brigades to disrupt the successive summits, the Italian government marshaled an imposing display of security forces, including 8,000 reinforcements flown in from around the country to patrol the city's waterways and narrow streets. Venetians were sometimes startled to see navy frogmen emerging from the littered green waters of the canals after periodic searches for limpet mines.

Inside a 17th century Benedictine monastery on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, across the Grand Canal from the Doge's Palace, the Europeans spent several hours deliberating their Middle East policy statement. Giscard, who had long been out in front in favor of Palestinian self-determination, wanted the statement to call for outright "participation" of the P.L.O. in negotiations. In the end, faced with opposition from Denmark and The Netherlands and, most of all, by West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, he conceded that such wording was premature; the conferees agreed to use the less provocative term "associate."

Although some observers interpreted the overall effect as a kind of de facto recognition of the P.L.O., the Europeans insisted that their declaration as a whole was evenhanded. On one side, it recognized Israel's "right to existence." On the other, it warned Israel against "any unilateral initiative to change the status of Jerusalem," a reference to a recent bill in the Knesset stating that Jerusalem should remain undivided as Israel's capital. Finally, in a separate gesture of pro-Western loyalty, the European leaders also supported the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan, calling it "genuinely national in nature." All in all, it was a forceful showing. As Carter packed his bags for Venice II, he could not help being mindful that Venice I had delivered up an important new player on the Middle East chessboard: Europe.

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