ANDROPOV to BREZHNEV. Clandestine visit to Moscow by Wadie HADDAD of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He requests the USSR to supply the PFLP with disguised ‘foreign-made’ equipment and weapons [R: 10 January 1975, 55-A-OV]. 2 pp.

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Top Secret

Special Importance

SPECIAL FILE

USSR Committee of State Security [KGB] at the USSR Council of Ministers

10 January of 1975. No. 55-A/Ov

Moscow

To the CPSU Central Committee

With the sanction of the CPSU Central Committee (№ P 147/42, 14 August 1974) Wadie Khaddad, a chief of the international services of the People Liberation Front of Palestine, illegally arrived in Moscow in September this year [1974, ¹].

Questions related to the strict secrecy of his collaboration with Soviet Secret Services were discussed in Moscow with Khaddad, to obtain up-to-date political, military and strategic information.

Khaddad fully understands the policy of the Soviet Union in the Middle East and he sees the USSR as a natural and the most reliable ally of the Palestinian National Liberation movement.

As a result of our political influence on Khaddad, he arrived at the conclusion that it will be necessary to transfer the center of gravity of operations he is conducting from other countries to Israel and the occupied Arab lands. While promising to abstain, by all means, from performing unreasonable and senseless terrorist acts.

For these purposes Khaddad requests our help in acquisition of some types of military weapons and technical equipment and also our help in their production from the foreign materials.

In the interest of the matter we assume it would possible to partially satisfy a request made by Khaddad and to illegally transfer certain Soviet military and technical means which we have previously supplied /…

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to the Middle East countries, and also to provide foreign weapons and special equipment, manufactured by us using foreign materials for production.

We request agreement.

Chairman of the State Security Committee

Andropov

[signature]

2477

The agreement was reported [illegible …]

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NOTES

In 1968 Wadie Haddad (1927-1978) and George Habash formed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the second largest group (after Arafat’s Al-Fatah) in the PLO. Operating at first from a base in Jordan, Haddad organised a succession of aircraft hijackings.

See two other reports about secret relations with, and supplies to, Haddad and the PFLP before and after this document: 27 April 1974 (1071-A/ov) and 16 May 1975 (1218-A/ov).

*

1. An error, evidently, the reference is to the previous year, September 1974.
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*

GENERAL

1. Notes and additions by translator and editor are bracketed, thus [ ];
2. Text added by hand is indicated in italic script.

translation by Julia Zaks; annotation and revision, JC

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