Palestine Liberation Organization

Issam Salem, the PLO's senior official in Lebanon, was shot and seriously wounded today in an ambush in this southern port city, police said. PLO officials in Paris with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat said they had heard that Salem was killed in the attack. In Sidon, 25 miles south of Beirut, police said Salem was driving along Fakhreddin Street when masked gunmen raked his car with gunfire at 1:05 p.m. "Salem is wounded in the head. His chances of survival are very slim," said a police spokesman.

A PLO official said today that Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization would seal a deal on mutual recognition within 24 hours and could sign an agreement on Palestinian self-rule by Sept. 13. In Cairo, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, asked about the timing, said: "It is still under discussion. " Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, standing next to Arafat, said he hoped recognition would take place within 48 hours. Egypt, the only Arab state to make peace with Israel, has urged Arab states to support the proposed PLO-Israeli agreement for Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho.

Here is a schedule for today's peace-accord signing between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and related events. The information was provided by senior U.S. officials. (All times are EDT.) PRELIMINARIES 10 a.m. Participants arrive at the White House, proceed to Blue Room for a meeting before the signing ceremony. 10:30 a.m. Blue Room meeting begins. Expected to attend are President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, top Arafat aide Abu Mazen, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Joergen Holst, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa.

By ordering the United Nations to close down the mission of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Congress has embroiled the United States in an unnecessary legal mess and muddied U.S. attempts to get a new Mideast peace offensive off the ground. The 1987 legislation, supposedly aimed to combat terrorism, has already shut down the PLO's Washington information office. That achievement, whatever one thinks of the PLO's policies, hit hard at U.S. guarantees of free speech, while doing nothing to stop terrorism.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has urged PLO leader Yasser Arafat to recognize Israel's right to exist, it was reported today. The Washington Post, quoting the Communist Party newspaper Pravda, said Gorbachev made the remarks in a meeting yesterday in Moscow with the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization. "The Palestinians are a people with a difficult fate," Gorbachev reportedly said. "But they receive broad international support, and this is the guarantee for resolving the main question for the Palestinians - self- determination.

Just imagine if Bill Clinton could make up the rules for the 1996 federal elections. He could set Election Day when his poll numbers were high. He could add seats to Congress for his cronies. If he were really powerful, he could control press coverage of him. Such power would be tempting. Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat was led into this kind of temptation. He fell - hard. Arafat, who is running for president in the first-ever Palestinian elections next Saturday, cut a week off the three-week campaign period, then started it early.

MILAN, ITALY ROOF COLLAPSE KILLS AT LEAST 22 The roof of a home for the elderly collapsed on a crowded dining room during breakfast today, killing at least 22 people, officials said. Nine other people were reported injured in the collapse in a Milan suburb and firemen were searching the rubble, said a Milan police official who would not give his name. At least five people were unaccounted for. Giacomo Rossano, a government official supervising rescue operations, told the ANSA news agency that rescuers had little hope of finding more people alive under the rubble.

Yasser Arafat has accepted an invitation to address Arab-Americans in Washington, D.C., says a Detroit attorney who met with the PLO leader in Tunisia, but such a visit could pose a dilemma for the Bush administration. Attorney and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee President Abdeen Jabara, who met with Arafat last weekend, said the Palestine Liberation Organization leader has agreed to speak to the group April 13 at its convention in Washington. However, the State Department yesterday refused to say whether Arafat would be allowed to enter the United States.

Yasser Arafat answered a challenge from President Francois Mitterrand by disavowing the Palestine Liberation Organization's charter, which calls for destruction of Israel. The PLO chairman said yesterday that the organization now favors a Palestinian and an Israeli state. The subject came up during a 90-minute meeting Arafat had with the French president. Mitterrand, a socialist, challenged Arafat by pointing out that the 25- year-old PLO charter contradicts the political program adopted by the PLO in November, said presidential spokesman Hubert Vedrine.

HAVE ARAFAT AND THE PLO TRULY CHANGED? Three weeks ago, the U.S. government refused to issue a visa to Yasir Arafat. Secretary of State George P. Shultz said then that Mr. Arafat was the leader of a terrorist organization and that he must have known of the acts of terror that are committed by his associates. Several months ago, Mr. Shultz was the target of a Palestine Liberation Organization car bomb in Jerusalem. Knuckling down to diplomatic pressure, the United States now is willing to speak with the PLO because it has uttered some words it has not been able to pronounce in the past.

Palestinian officials averted an early crisis in the post-Yasir Arafat era yesterday by persuading a popular leader of the four-year-old uprising to abandon plans to run for president of the Palestinian Authority from his Israeli prison cell. Bending to entreaties from one of his closest allies, Marwan Barghouti announced that he would instead support Mahmoud Abbas to succeed Arafat, who died earlier this month. The decision cleared the way for the more conciliatory Abbas to consolidate his position as front-runner in the Jan. 9 election and made it less likely that a major challenger would emerge.

Egypt prepared yesterday for a strictly controlled military funeral for Yasser Arafat where dignitaries from around the world will pay their respects, but where the people - among whom Arafat was by far more popular - will mostly be shut out. The planned 25-minute ceremony at a military club in a Cairo suburb reflects concern for security at an event expected to draw dozens of statesmen and foreign ministers. But Egypt also apparently sought to avoid an outpouring of public emotion that might either get out of control or show that the late Palestinian leader enjoyed more support than other Arab leaders.

The headline on Yasir Arafat's obituary should read: "He just couldn't close the deal. " In 30 years of covering the Middle East, I watched time and again as the Palestinian leader blew opportunities that could have brought his people a state. He put the Palestinian issue on the map, but couldn't make the leap from guerrilla leader to father of Palestine. The big question now is whether his death will open new possibilities for the two-state solution that he wasn't capable of achieving during his life.

Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat had a brain hemorrhage Monday night and was in a deep coma yesterday when Palestinian officials visited his hospital outside Paris, the officials said. Comments by the officials and the reactions of people in the Palestinian territories indicated that they believed he was not expected to live long. The Palestinians' chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, announced at a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah that Arafat, 75, had had a brain hemorrhage.

With all the emotion and political consequence that will come with Yasir Arafat's death, Israel has prepared contingency plans to handle any one of a number of possible scenarios. Foremost is the issue of the return of Arafat's body from the Paris hospital where he was rushed last week for treatment of a mysterious illness. In all likelihood, Palestinian and Israeli sources say, his body would be first repatriated to the West Bank city of Ramallah or to the Gaza Strip. According to a secret report on contingency plans obtained last summer by the Associated Press, Israel said it would do everything in its power to stop Arafat's burial in Jerusalem, a city to which both Jews and Arabs lay claim.

Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat clung to life in a French military hospital yesterday amid conflicting reports about just how grave his condition had become. "Mr. Arafat is not dead," contrary to some early reports, said a spokesman for the Percy Military Training Hospital, Gen. Christian Estripeau. Reading from a statement issued in consultation with Arafat's wife, Suha, Estripeau said Arafat, 75, had been transferred to a specialized hospital service after his condition had "grown more complicated.

Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, while reviled by Israelis and the Bush administration, has been a unifying symbol to his people, and his death or disability likely will usher in prolonged instability and possibly internecine bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, government officials and analysts said yesterday. Arafat, 75 and ailing, was to be flown to Paris today for emergency medical treatment. He leaves behind a political vacuum that he created over four decades by jealously guarding political power and ruthlessly undercutting political rivals.

Yesterday Israel bombed locations in Gaza and the West Bank in retaliation for bombings over the weekend that left 10 dead in Jerusalem and 15 dead in Haifa. Hamas quickly claimed responsibility for the bombings - which again laid bare the ineffectiveness of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. Now, more perhaps than at any time since Israel set him in place in 1993, Arafat and his incompetence are in the spotlight. The trouble here is, Israel has only itself to blame for bringing Arafat on to the scene.

On the violence-scarred streets of this city, the reaction to the latest cease-fire agreement was swift and angry yesterday, calling into question the ability of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to halt the violence. "I think the next revolution must be against Arafat and his group," one bitter Palestinian demonstrator said, expressing the widely held belief that "Palestinian blood was sold cheaply" at the bargaining table in Egypt. Many accused Arafat of succumbing to U.S. pressure.

In the latest of a series of interviews with presidential candidates, freelance writer Scott Holleran talked to conservative leader Gary Bauer, now running for the Republican nomination, about evolution, culture, free speech, the rights of the unborn and Social Security. Scott Holleran: Would you support a school board that prohibited teaching the theory of evolution? Gary Bauer: My own preference, if I was on a local school board, would be to expose children to the two competitive theories: evolution and divine intervention.