World Notes Middle East

"The militant martyr Nasser Ibrahim Abdel Aziz carried out his own suicide operation." With that, an anonymous telephone caller who identified himself as a spokesman for the Abu Nidal terrorist organization told a French news agency in Paris that a surprise attack against an Israeli border patrol in the occupied West Bank last week had been committed by the same shadowy Palestinian terrorist group that staged the bloody Dec. 27 attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports. Israeli authorities doubted that Abu Nidal was involved. The terrorist killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded two others before he was * shot to death.

Until last week, no Israelis had been killed as a result of border infiltration since 1981. The assault took place when the gunman, a 20-year-old deserter from the Jordanian army, crossed the Jordan River and ambushed a truck carrying five Israeli soldiers. The attack was apparently aimed at disrupting talks in Amman between Jordan's King Hussein and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Those talks, about forming a common front for future negotiations with Israel, once again ended inconclusively.