PLO Plays Key Role in Lead-Up to Peace Talks : Mideast: Israel’s Shamir seems inclined to let the organization participate in a barely disguised way.

JERUSALEM —  One Palestinian activist remembers his secret trip to visit Yasser Arafat like this: He was standing with a fellow militant, a West Bank college educator, at a June conference on Middle East affairs in Paris. A Palestine Liberation Organization official came up to them, offered his hand and the simple greeting “The Old Man wants to see you.”

Within hours, the two were on a commercial jet headed for Tunis and meetings with high PLO officials, including the Old Man, which is what Palestinians call PLO leader Arafat out of earshot. “We got to Tunis and saw everybody,” the Palestinian recalled. “They all wanted to hear our opinion. And, I think, to hear that we were loyal to the PLO.”

The journey was but one of dozens made in the last seven months by Palestinians to Tunisia, the exile base of the PLO, activists say. The trips exemplify the central role played by the PLO in the lead-up to proposed Middle East peace talks, despite the group’s international isolation in the wake of the Gulf War.

Palestinians are convinced the Israeli government knows about some, if not all of the trips despite its official frown on PLO contacts. Israel is looking the other way at the behest of Washington, which is giving the PLO an off-stage role in arranging Mideast peace talks, Palestinians and reports in Israeli newspapers say.

Only when publicly embarrassed does the Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir act to preclude the PLO role--as in the case of Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi, two local Palestinian leaders who recently made a thinly disguised visit to Algeria to attend a PLO convention.

Such contact is supposed to be illegal and, on Tuesday, Israeli police called Husseini and Ashrawi in for questioning. No charges are expected to be filed right away, if ever. The pair are scheduled to fly to Washington in coming days to meet with Secretary of State James A. Baker III to work out details of Palestinian participation in the proposed talks.

“I think we will visit Baker on schedule,” said Husseini before his questioning.

Washington, meantime, refuses to contact the PLO directly because of the group’s role in a botched terror attack on Israel last year. But evidence of an active PLO role in talks far outweigh indications that they could be shut out. Husseini and Ashrawi communicate with the PLO by fax and phone and on visits to Europe; they openly present themselves to Baker as PLO representatives.

PLO officials are visiting Jordan this week to work out details of a delegation that, under the rules of the proposed talks, would include Jordanians and Palestinians. Shamir, despite his view that the PLO, as a terrorist group, has no standing, seems inclined to let the organization play a barely disguised role.

In a speech to Israel’s Parliament on Monday, he assured listeners that the PLO “will not at any phase take part in the peace process.” In almost the same breath, he added that if the Palestinians “announce at any stage that they were appointed by, or represent the PLO terrorist organization, Israel will not sit with them.”

But the flip side to the threat seemed to be: If the Palestinians simply don’t announce they are sitting in for the PLO, Shamir will have to stay put.

The phenomenon seems yet another example of the difficulties in counting out the PLO and Arafat, its durable chieftain. After backing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, they were thought to be a spent force in the Middle East. Israel, especially, declared the group irrelevant, but apparently to no avail.

Palestinians have been trooping to PLO headquarters not only to pay respects, nationalists here say. They have also delivered messages about the sorry state of the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and, recently, the need to gamble on peace talks as a means of gaining independence from Israel.

Despite the PLO’s international postwar isolation, many Palestinian leaders in the occupied West Bank and Gaza view the organization as a useful outside force to pressure Israel militarily and diplomatically.

The PLO offered the visiting envoys “sweets,” in the words of one Palestinian: promises of money for local projects, expressions of interest in their problems and a sympathetic ear. After the twin disasters of losing Iraq’s military might in the Gulf War and hopes for Soviet support after the failure of the August coup, the PLO is clinging to the West Bank and Gaza as its last active stronghold.

PLO fears that the rebellious population in the occupied lands might make a separate peace with Israel gave added weight to pleas of Husseini and Ashrawi to join the talks, Palestinians believe.