(4 of 9)
Washington had already decided to take a strong stand against any objections by its allies to the terrorist-interception effort. Any subsequent repairs in relations, the White House had decided, would take place largely behind the scenes, and at a lower level of priority than the pursuit of the antiterrorist policy. Thus the U.S. was both ready and willing to express its unhappiness to the Italians, even as American diplomats scrambled to see if they could get Abbas back from the Yugoslavs. There was little hope, of course, for that. The nonaligned Communist government in Belgrade quietly let Washington know that it would refuse the formal request for extradition that the U.S. had quickly submitted.
After Washington heard of Abbas' flight from Italy, word was passed to both Ambassador Rabb in Rome and White House Spokesman Larry Speakes in Washington to display U.S. displeasure plainly. Both men certainly did. In a two-hour meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti on Sunday, Oct. 13, Rabb declared that the Craxi government's release of Abbas was "incomprehensible to the U.S." Speakes used the same words in a statement issued in Washington. Shortly thereafter, Administration officials publicly claimed to possess transcripts of radio conversations that took place during the Achille Lauro hijacking. In a statement, the White House charged that Abbas "planned and controlled" the operation. The Administration refused to release its evidence, however, saying that it could compromise intelligence- gathering methods. At the same time that the Administration issued its complaints about Italy, the U.S. Justice Department announced its intention to get Abbas "wherever he goes."
Some representatives of the press seemed to have no trouble finding him in Belgrade. The Egyptian Middle East News Agency conducted an interview with Abbas in which he declared that the Achille Lauro hijackers had never intended to take over the ship, but instead to launch an attack on the Israeli port of Ashdod, one of the liner's scheduled stops. In another interview with Yugoslav Journalist Dobrica Pivnicki, Abbas once again denied any foreknowledge of the hijacking. Said he: "When we learned that a Palestinian group hijacked the Achille Lauro, we didn't believe it." He concluded with a harsh denunciation of the U.S.: "We Palestinians, through this chance event, now know that the real enemy is the U.S., while Israel is only one of the federal units of the U.S.A."
While Abbas issued his protestations of innocence, the U.S. was already beginning to make an effort at damage control in its relations with Egypt. Ambassador Nicholas Veliotes--who first confirmed the murder of Leon Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro and urged the Mubarak government to "prosecute those sons of bitches"--made a conciliatory statement in Cairo. He declared that the U.S. had "deep regrets" about what it felt was the "necessary" interception of Cairo's EgyptAir 737.