The New York Times · 11 April 1973

CP-1973-020

Three Slain Were Prominent Commandos

Special to The New York Times

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BEIRUT, Lebanon, April 10—If the Palestinian guerrilla movement had a foreign minister, Mohammed Yussef Najjar, who was killed early today by Israeli commandos, would have been a likely candidate. Mr. Najjar was one of three prominent Palestinians killed in the raid. The others were Kamal Adwan and Kamal Nasser. Abu Yussef, as Mr.

Najjar was known in the commando movement, was a founder of Al Fatah, the main guerrilla organization, when he and Yasir Arafat, now Fatah's leader were Palestinian refugees working in Kuwait in 1965.

For a while he was in the movement's second rank but began to rise to prominence after King Hussein's Army ousted most of the Palestinian guerrilla from Jordan in the 1970 civil war. Mr. Najjar was not prominent as a guerrilla fighter but he had shown unusual diplomatic and negotiating abilities. A mind-mannered man of 47, educated as an engineer, Mr.

Najjar was an expert on government relations and negotiations between guerrilla factions. He is probably the nearest thing to an Arab guerrilla diplomat. These qualities were tested in 1969 when serious problems developed between the Palestinian community and the Lebanese Government. Mr.

Najjar was put in charge of liaison between Fatah, representing politically the 250,000 Palestinians in Lebanon—many of them in refugee camps—and the Government. Friend of Politicians He became a close friend of Lebanese political leaders, including Premier Saeb Salam, who resigned today, and of many Arab ambassadors here and in other countries. Mr.

Najjar was one of the two Fatah representatives on the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He headed the political department, which coordinates representation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in various countries, including Western Europe, as well as relations with the Arab League.

Although his name has been linked, because of reported intelligence activity, to the Black September guerrilla organization — which takes its name from the September, 1970, war in Jordan—it is not believed in informed guerrilla circles that Mr. Najjar was in any operational control of the secret terrorist group.

Kamal Adwan, about 37, rose in Fatah ranks after the Jordanian war, becoming head of the information department, but this job was short-lived because Fatah agreed to unify information services under the Palestine Liberation Organization. Organizing Resistance Since then Mr.

Adwan was said to have been assigned responsibility for organizing resistance cells among Palestinians living on the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. He is not so well known publicly as Mr. Najjar and has tended to stay in the background of the commando organization.

Kamal Nasser, who had been official spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, did not join the active resistance until after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war when the Israelis expelled him from his home on the West Bank. Mr. Nasser, once a left-wing deputy of the Baath Socialist party in Jordan until King Hussein suppressed the party, is more of a poet than a guerrilla.

He is known in Beirut as an animated conversationalist in cafe and intellectual circles, and his allegiance to the guerrilla movement expressed itself more in words than in armed action. He became spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization because he was independent in his relations with the various commando groups and because of his reputation as an intellectual.

He was considered an excellent writer of Arabic poetry, an art form he had practiced since he was 15. But as an information specialist he was disorganized and often, in the view of Western journalists, imprecise and hard to find when information was wanted. Mr. Nasser was a Christian.

He had always been a peaceful man and refused to carry a gun despite warnings that his life might be in danger.

How this transcription was made

One scan of a full page (page 14, edition mark L+), read at 7x-10x in four columns. Masthead strip across the top reads THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1973. The page also carries a SECOND, separate article at the bottom left, "Lebanese Premier Resigns After Attack" (a jump from page 1), recorded here as its own entry, and a Franklin Simon dress advertisement occupying the lower right, which is not transcribed. Maria's slide label names only one item for this slide.

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