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The Ambassador also passed on to Mubarak a letter from President Reagan. In it, Reagan said that the U.S. had done what it believed it had to do in intercepting the Egyptian airliner. The President also pointed out that the U.S. and Egypt shared an interest in fighting terrorism. Finally, Reagan asserted that there were too many important ties between the U.S. and Egypt to allow them to be damaged by a single incident. U.S. officials described the missive as "very conciliatory, without being apologetic."
Mubarak, however, declared that he was still too upset to read the letter. As protests continued in the streets of Cairo, always under close supervision by riot police armed with tear gas and nightsticks, the Egyptian President demanded an apology from the U.S. for "all Egyptians." That prompted President Reagan's "Never" response, raising the public dimension of the crisis another notch. But already U.S. diplomats in Cairo were suspecting that Mubarak's outrage, while honest enough, was also part of a calculated effort to let the volatile Egyptian populace blow off steam over the EgyptAir incident. In the days ahead, Mubarak's tone would slowly moderate; meanwhile he staved off appeals from both left- and right-wing opposition parties calling for specific retaliatory measures against the U.S.
In human terms, the most poignant new development came on Monday, when the body of Leon Klinghoffer washed ashore near the Syrian port of Tartus. The Achille Lauro was off the Syrian coast when the retired Manhattan appliance manufacturer, who was partly paralyzed by two strokes and confined to a wheelchair, had been killed and his body thrown overboard. Abbas and P.L.O. Chairman Arafat, among others, had publicly questioned whether Klinghoffer had actually been shot. The Syrian government of President Hafez Assad, a foe of Arafat's, quickly reported the discovery of the corpse, and an FBI agent flew to Damascus to help make an identification based on Klinghoffer's dental records. Later the body was flown to Rome, where it was confirmed that Klinghoffer had suffered gunshot wounds to both the head and chest.
Arafat suffered a different blow to his credibility on Monday in London. There, British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe announced the cancellation of a planned meeting between himself and a joint Jordanian-P.L.O. delegation, the first such meeting ever scheduled between P.L.O. representatives and a member of the British government. If the meeting had taken place as planned, it would have given a new measure of authority to the P.L.O. as the legitimate voice for Palestinian interests in the Middle East. Even though Arafat was not one of the P.L.O. representatives invited to attend, the gathering, if successful, would have bolstered his campaign to portray himself as a political moderate.