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Friday September 13, 1996

MKs visit Orient House in Jerusalem

DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

JERUSALEM -- A small group of Labor Party members of the Knesset Interior Committee met this week at Orient House with Faisal Husseini and other Palestinian officials.

The group, acting in defiance of government policy, made the visit to the Palestinian Authority's de facto headquarters in eastern Jerusalem to hear the problems of Palestinians living in the Holy City.

Committee Chairman Saleh Tareef organized the visit.

He was accompanied by his fellow Labor Party Knesset members Rafi Elul and Micha Goldman.

Committee members from the Likud Party and its coalition partners boycotted the visit.

Orient House has long been at the center of a simmering dispute, particularly when Palestinian officials host foreign dignitaries there.

Israeli leaders want to prevent the Palestinians from gaining an official foothold in Jerusalem.

Israel has long regarded that city as its eternal, indivisible capital.

Israel has repeatedly called on the Palestinian Authority not to conduct any activities at Orient House that are related to their self-rule government, which is confined to operating in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The committee members' visit to Orient House came amid Israeli diplomatic efforts to prevent a group of European foreign ministers from meeting Palestinian officials there.

Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy conveyed this message to his Irish counterpart, Dick Spring, during a visit last week to Dublin.

Levy told Spring that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had reached an agreement with Israel not to hold a meeting later this year at Orient House with a European Union "troika" of foreign ministers from Italy, Holland and Ireland.

At a meeting during the weekend in Ireland of the 15 E.U. foreign ministers, Spring, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the organization, confirmed his earlier decision to meet at Orient House.

But he added that he would confirm whether Arafat had reached an agreement with Israel to hold the meeting elsewhere.

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