U.S. Learns It's Not Easy To Turn Out The P.L.O.

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WASHINGTON WHEN Congress passed a law prohibiting anyone in the United States from operating an office on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization, its purpose seemed clear and simple. It wanted to close the P.L.O.'s observer mission to the United Nations because it had found the P.L.O. was a terrorist organization.

But enforcement of the statute has proved much more complex, because it raises novel and delicate questions of constitutional and international law. The result has been a legal battle that could last for months.

On one side, 65 United States citizens and American organizations have united, asserting that the law infringes on their rights to hear the views of the P.L.O. at a time when public interest is high because of events in the Middle East.

The Reagan Administration is of two minds, denouncing the law as an unwise policy but defending it in court as a legitimate exercise of Congress's power. Secretary of State George P. Shultz called the law “one of the dumber things that the Congress has done lately.”

He noted that the United Nations had explicitly invited the P.L.O. to participate in its deliberations, and he told Congress last year that closure of the P.L.O. mission “would be seen as a violation of a U.S. treaty obligation” — a 1947 agreement establishing U.N. headquarters in New York.

“We are under an obligation to permit P.L.O. observer mission personnel to enter and remain in the United States to carry out their official functions” at the United Nations, Mr. Shultz said. He warned Congress that the United Nations might refer the issue to the World Court, where, he said, “We [the] United States must submit the dispute to international arbitration.”

Many people are surprised to hear the Justice Department argue that a statute enacted by Congress supersedes a prior treaty if the two are in conflict. But the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld that principle, declaring more than a century ago that a treaty had “no superiority” over a subsequent inconsistent law.

While it may be true that Congress can abrogate a treaty by passing a law, jurists also say that statutes should be interpreted wherever possible so as not to violate the American obligations under international law. “An act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations” if any other interpretation is possible, the Supreme Court said in 1804.

In March, the Justice Department asked a Federal District Court in New York City to order the closing of the P.L.O. observer mission. Justice Department officials say they will not take action to close the P.L.O. office until there is a decision by the Federal court in New York, which could take weeks or months.

The P.L.O. is asking the court to dismiss the case, and the Justice Department is urging a quick ruling, without a full trial. The 1987 law carries no criminal penalties. “No one is going to be arrested,” a Government lawyer said.

In a legal brief filed on behalf of Zehdi Labib Terzi, the head of the P.L.O. mission in New York, Ramsey Clark, a former United States Attorney General, declared: “If the United Sates can unilaterally and cavalierly remove the P.L.O. mission from the conversation among the peoples of the U.N. at its headquarters, it can remove any nation or participant and destroy the United Nations.”

The Justice Department maintains that Mr. Terzi “cannot claim any immunity from American law” based on the 1947 agreement because, as an observer, he is not entitled to the “privileges and immunities” of diplomats representing U.N. member states. The P.L.O.'s deputy observer at the United Nations, Riyad H. Mansour, is a United States citizen.

He contends that the new law violates his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association.

How this transcription was made

Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [no masthead on clipping] — A single narrow column clipping with a kicker "Legal Complications" set above the headline (the kicker is sliced at the top of the scan and is read with difficulty; it is NOT a deck and dek is left empty). Read at 12x-20x. RESOLUTION WARNING, PLEASE READ BEFORE CITING: this source file is only 240 pixels wide. Magnification past about 12x is interpolation, not detail. Most of the text is confidently legible, but a few letterforms sit at or below the limit. Specifically: the word transcribed as "violates" in the final paragraph renders as "vidates" even at 20x, and I am reading it from context, not from clean letterforms — it is the one word in this record I would not swear to. By contrast "United Sates" in the Ramsey Clark quotation and "United Natons" in the photo caption ARE clean at magnification and are transcribed as the paper's own typographical errors. The last paragraphs of the clipping (on Leonard S. Boudin and the registration of American citizens with the Government) are below usable resolution and are not transcribed. The excerpt also fills one bracketed gap: the Shultz World Court quotation runs off the first column mid-sentence and resumes in a passage I could read; I have marked the joining words [the] in brackets rather than presenting them as read.

Cite this clipping

"U.S. Learns It's Not Easy To Turn Out The P.L.O.," (newspaper unidentified), 8 May 1988. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1988-122. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1988-122