Failure in Fez

By George Russell

The Arab meeting collapses

It began as an unprecedented effort to forge Arab unity around a comprehensive Middle East peace plan. It ended after 5 1/2 hours of bickering as yet another milestone in the 30-year Arab tradition of political disarray. The twelfth summit meeting of the 21-member Arab League, held briefly and acrimoniously last week behind the venerable battlements of the Moroccan city of Fez, undermined the prestige of the royal House of Saud, which had striven mightily to bring the conclave to a successful outcome. Yet even as the angry Saudi leaders stalked to their waiting aircraft, it was by no means clear that their efforts to find an alternative to the sputtering Camp David peace process had been dealt a final blow.

At the center of the squabbling at Fez, where Morocco's King Hassan II played host, was the eight-point peace proposal outlined last August by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Fahd. The plan offers tacit recognition of Israel's right to exist in exchange for, among other things, a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Bitterly opposed by the Israelis, the plan was conceived by the cautious Saudis to achieve an Arab consensus.

Prior to last week's summit, the Fahd plan had drawn favorable comment from Western Europe, mild encouragement from the Reagan Administration and qualified endorsement from Palestine Liberation Organization Leader Yasser Arafat, who called it a "good beginning." Two weeks ago, the plan was approved by the five Persian Gulf states that, along with the Saudis, constitute the newly formed Gulf Cooperation Council*

But some of the heads of radical Arab states, which refuse to grant Israel the right to exist, never wanted to attend the summit. Libya's Muammar Gaddafi made it known that he would boycott the session. So did Algeria's Bendjedid Chadli, Marxist South Yemen's Ali Nasser Mohammed and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who was still smarting from Israel's surprise raid last June on the nuclear reactor in Baghdad. In all, eight top-level Arab leaders failed to go to Fez, including Syria's President Hafez Assad, who sent in his place Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam.

Although Khaddam led the outcry against the Fahd plan at the meeting, he carefully avoided saying that Syria rejected the proposal outright. He made it clear that Assad's longstanding opposition to acceptance of Israel was more a matter of strategy. If the Arabs tacitly accepted Israel's existence, he argued, what incentive was there for Israel to return captured Arab lands or grant Palestinian self-determination? The Saudis' rebuttal was that a unified Arab position might have far-reaching effects on global public opinion, as it did in Rabat in 1974 when the leaders recognized the P.L.O. as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians.

But Khaddam made his points so abrasively that he outraged King Hassan and other moderates. At one point, Khaddam announced that he was tired and hungry. Hassan turned and said that if he wanted a meal, an airplane was ready to take him back to Damascus. Finally, when Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Ati Obeidi declared the Fahd plan to be "outright treason," Hassan could stand no more. He gaveled the meeting to a close.

Radical Arabs were exultant at the outcome. Libya's Obeidi pronounced the Fahd plan "finished." In Egypt, meanwhile, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Butros Ghali declared that the collapse of the summit vindicated his country's Camp David agreements with Israel, and showed that Arab decisions made without consulting Egypt were doomed to failure (Egypt was suspended from Arab League deliberations in March 1979, after signing the Camp David accords). In Jerusalem, Israelis speculated that the position of P.L.O. Leader Arafat had been undermined. But among the 1.3 million Palestinians on the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, the reaction was bitter disappointment. Said Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij, a moderate P.L.O. supporter: "The Arabs are behaving like children. If you had a plebiscite here, morethan 90% would vote yes for the Fahd plan."

In Washington, reaction to the summit was muted. The State Department is anxious not to devalue Saudi influence in the Arab world; Washington has cultivated it, values it and needs it, particularly in helping to solve such delicate problems as the standoff in Lebanon, where Syria still maintains ground-to-air missiles that Israel has vowed to attack if they are not removed. Nonetheless, the U.S. is not unhappy to see the Saudi peace plan disappear, at least for a while, since it has added complications to already tense U.S.-Israeli relations and to dealings between the U.S. and Europe, which has given substantial support to the Saudi proposals. Says a State Department expert: "It's better to let it all cool off."

The Saudis were furious at the set back, but they will continue to pursue their peace initiative. Says P.L.O. Spokes man Mahmoud Labadi: "Prince Fahd and King Hassan were personally hurt, and I doubt if the plan will be brought up at an other summit, but it is not dead."

With the exception of Libya and South Yemen, the Arab states basically want a settlement with Israel along the lines of the Fahd plan. Moreover, some of the states depend on Saudi funds, as does the P.L.O. But a number of Arab governments are now put off by Israeli intransigence and the fact that the U.S. has not given firmer backing to the Fahd proposal.

If the Camp David process finally fails to achieve a comprehensive settlement, as most Arabs hope it will, even the radical states may also want to rally be hind the Fahd plan, thus putting more pressure on the U.S. to endorse its general goals. Said an Arab editor last week: "The Fahd plan is only a seed that has been planted now. It can hang around until it is ripe." Saudi patience and Saudi money cannot be discounted too early or too easily in the struggle for a unified Arab peace plan.

--By George Russell. Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington and William Stewart/Fez

*Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates.

With reporting by Johanna McGeary/Washington, William Stewart/Fez

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