Khadafy Urges Arab Militancy

TRIPOLI, Libya -- Moammar Khadafy has urged Arab militants to pool their efforts for an "intensified struggle against imperialism" in Europe and the United States, high-ranking Palestinian officials said yesterday.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some leading radicals rejected the Libyan leader's thinly veiled call for a new terrorist campaign, including George Habash and Abu Moussa.

The sources said Khadafy proposed a new wave of violence Sunday at the opening of an emergency conference of a militant group called the "Allied Leadership of the Revolutionary Forces of the Arab Nation," but he got only lukewarm support.

Khadafy has repeatedly denied American assertions that he harbors and supports such Palestinian terrorists as Sabry al-Banna, the renegade Palestinian known as Abu Nidal whom the United States blames for the December 27 airport attacks in Rome and Vienna.

Contrary to earlier expectations, reporters were barred from Khadafy's opening speech at the Arab conference and from the rest of the meeting, which was expected to end yesterday.

More than 20 hard-line organizations opposed to Yasser Arafat's mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization took part. The PLO was not invited, and Nayef Hawatmeh's Moscow-oriented Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine did not attend.

The Palestinian sources, all of whom were at the meeting, said Khadafy delivered a violent speech attacking the United States in general and President Reagan in particular for ordering sanctions and "threatening" Libya with the naval maneuvers.

"The time has come for the Arab nation to hit back by uniting to strike at the heart of imperalism," the sources quoted him as saying. There was no official report on the proceedings, and Libyan officials declined comment.

The sources said Khadafy told the meeting Reagan's policies made it necessary for all the militant movements in the Middle East to merge into a single, powerful front that could "give the Americans the answer they deserve."

They said Abu Nidal did not attend the meeting but sent several representatives of his organization, which he calls the Fatah Revolutionary Council.

Abu Moussa, who led an unsuccessful military campaign to oust Arafat from the PLO leadership, made clear to Khadafy outside the conference hall that he was not interested in joining a new terrorist campaign, the sources said.

Habash also refused to commit his Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to Khadafy's proposed campaign of violence, the sources added, and Ahmed Jebril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, "showed little enthusiasm."

The American sanctions and the simultaneous sharp decline in oil prices have reduced Khadafy's oil income in recent weeks from an annual rate of $8 billion to an estimated $6 billion, and he may have to make substantial cuts in aid to Arab radicals.