Middle East: Picking Up the Pace

Without warning, the fickle thermostat that governs Middle East diplomacy seemed to click from freeze to thaw last week. Conciliatory messages about the prospects for peace floated back and forth between the leaders of Israel and Jordan. Top-ranking officials of Syria, Jordan and Egypt met in various locales to focus their efforts on uncharacteristic unity rather than on their sometimes murderous differences. Even members of Yasser Arafat’s Tunis-based Palestine Liberation Organization seemed to be caught up in the wave of regional fence mending as they tried to woo the support of members of rival P.L.O. factions in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Far from clear was whether the flurry of activity would lead to any real progress in the exasperating and nearly moribund Middle East peace process. The answer to that question was eagerly awaited by the Reagan Administration. The White House was engaged in some substantial fence mending of its own as a result of the international turmoil that followed the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise liner (see following story). In addition, the Administration suffered a painful and perhaps unnecessary blow last week to its Middle East peace efforts as Congress effectively squelched, at least until March 1, a $1.5 billion U.S. arms deal with Jordan’s King Hussein. But there were indisputable waftings of renewed optimism surrounding the prospects for the violent and volatile region. Items:

At the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel saluted the U.N.’s 40th anniversary with a speech that experts considered to be one of the most accommodating public statements ever made by an Israeli leader on the subject of the peace process. Recalling the late Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Israel in 1977, Peres pledged to go to Jordan “or any location” to hold direct peace negotiations with King Hussein before the end of 1985. For the first time, Peres also gave partial support to Hussein’s long-standing insistence on an international peace conference as a forum for solving the Middle East’s problems. The Israeli Labor Party leader’s offer was speedily denounced back home by hard-line members of the other major partner in his national unity government, the Likud bloc.

In Amman, Peres’ speech drew a surprisingly favorable response from Hussein. In an interview with the New York Times, the Jordanian monarch called the Israeli offer “a positive one in its spirit,” even though it failed in “meeting the needs of the moment.” Peres, in turn, was described as “positively surprised” by Hussein’s receptiveness.

Also in Amman, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak showed up for a private five-hour meeting with Hussein. The two moderate Arab leaders had a couple of important items on their agenda: how to reinvigorate the peace process and what to do about the role of Arafat and the P.L.O. in the wake of the Achille Lauro debacle. Later, Mubarak indicated his hope that the P.L.O. leader could be persuaded to stay in line with the objectives of the peace process.

In Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, Jordanian Prime Minister Zaid al Rifa’i and his Syrian counterpart, Abdel-Rauf al Kasm, apparently made strides in healing the long-standing rift between their countries. The two men met at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Syria severed diplomatic relations with Jordan in 1980, and the situation became even more strained after Jordan’s Hussein put together his Feb. 11 agreement with P.L.O. Leader Arafat to reach a negotiated Middle East settlement with Israel. The signs of rapprochement between Hussein and Syrian President Hafez Assad raised the long-term possibility of an even more broadly based regional peace bid.

On the surface at least, all that activity was heartening. But most of the stirrings were also tentative and even contradictory in their objectives and strategies. Peres’ U.N. speech could not be separated from his other apparent goal, the removal of the P.L.O. from the peace negotiations. The Israeli leader has repeatedly argued that Arafat has “dealt himself out of the peace process” with his alleged terrorist practices. As Peres often puts it, “You cannot talk and kill at the same time.”

In his U.N. speech, the Israeli leader took yet another anti-P.L.O. tack. He sidestepped Arafat entirely and appealed instead to the Palestinian people to join the peace talks. Said Peres: “Come forth and recognize the reality of the state of Israel. Let us face each other across the negotiating table.”

Peres’ apparent concession to Hussein on the matter of an international peace conference took a highly convoluted form. In his U.N. speech, the Prime Minister said that “if deemed necessary,” peace talks “may be initiated with the support of an international forum, as agreed upon by the negotiating states.” He suggested that permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (the U.S., Britain, France, China and the Soviet Union) might be involved, an idea that seemed to give the Soviets entrée to the peace talks. But Peres quickly added that countries “who confine their diplomatic relations to one side of the conflict [should] exclude themselves.” That effectively fenced off Peking and Moscow, which currently have no formal relations with Jerusalem.

The issue of diplomatic recognition did not come up in a brief, unscheduled meeting between Peres and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze later in the week. Instead, Shevardnadze quizzed Peres about the fate of specific Soviet Jews who had emigrated to Israel from the Soviet diplomat’s native republic of Georgia.

Peres’ U.N. performance did not please some of his Cabinet colleagues from the Likud bloc. Several of the dissidents, including Finance Minister Yitzhak Moda’i, charged that the Peres proposals had not been approved, or even discussed, by the Cabinet before the Prime Minister left for Vienna, Washington and New York City on Oct. 15. Deputy Prime Minister David Levy accused Peres of “dangerous deviations from the agreed policy of this government.” Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, leader of the Likud bloc, was more circumspect. At a two-hour luncheon meeting with European Community foreign ministers in Luxembourg, he said only that an “international forum” would allow the P.L.O. to “hide behind” one or more participating delegations.

During his Times interview, King Hussein took pains to compliment Peres as a “man of vision,” even while keeping a wary distance from the Israeli peace offer. Both Hussein and Egypt’s Mubarak were sorely tried by the P.L.O. during the Achille Lauro ordeal. Hussein was further irked at the cancellation of an Oct. 14 meeting in London between British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe and two P.L.O. representatives; the session was called off after one of the P.L.O. members refused to endorse the right of Israel to exist. But Hussein last week carefully insisted that “at the right time under the right circumstances the P.L.O. will make its contribution to the objective of peace.” Later he lauded Peres’ speech as “the beginning of movement in the right direction.”

In Tunis, at least one P.L.O. official would admit that there were “quite a few positive things” in the Peres speech, notably the reference to an international forum. The same official said that his organization was “pretty confident” that Hussein would never deal directly and independently with Israel. The King and Arafat are expected to meet this week in Amman.

The pro-Arafat P.L.O. hierarchy was more worried about the understandings reached in Saudi Arabia between Jordan and Syria. The main concern: that the two countries might agree on a format for dealing with the Israelis without P.L.O. participation. To try to ensure against that eventuality, Arafat’s Tunis-based branch of the P.L.O. was assiduously cultivating two Syria-based P.L.O. factions, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian Communist Party. Said a P.L.O. source in Tunis: “We don’t want our cause to be hijacked by any Arab country or countries.”

In Washington, Peres’ U.N. speech was hailed by State Department Spokesman Bernard Kalb as a “statesmanlike, thoughtful, forward-looking exposition.” The U.S., said Kalb, welcomed Peres’ reaffirmation of the “urgency” of moving ahead with the peace process. In fact, Washington was involved in helping Peres get his message across. Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, visited Amman two weeks ago and briefed Hussein on at least the broad outlines of Peres’ forthcoming U.N. proposal. Murphy last week returned to New York City and, along with Secretary of State George Shultz, conferred with Peres before the Israeli leader left the U.S. for France.

How the U.S. is expected to continue to help the peace process along is harder to say. A corner-stone of the Administration effort, at least from the Jordanian side, was the $1.5 billion arms deal that the White House promised to Hussein’s government last spring. Included in the package were about 40 advanced F-16 or F-20 jet fighters and a dozen Hawk antiaircraft missile systems, items looked on by many U.S. legislators as threats to Israel’s security. Seventy-four U.S. Senators cosponsored a resolution to block the weapons sale. Nonetheless, the White House blithely announced early last week that it would go ahead with the deal unless both houses of Congress voted it down within 30 days. With just such a prospect beginning to appear likely, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana engineered the March 1 delay as a compromise. Most legislators, however, saw the move as a humiliating Administration defeat.

The week’s diplomatic roundelay was a heartening shift in the pattern of Middle East maneuvering, but will the renewed to-ing and fro-ing about peace yield concrete results? Not many diplomats were willing to venture a prediction. U.S. officials went only so far as to say that the Israeli nod toward an international forum for the peace process is “a substantive development.” Said a U.S. official: “It means we can begin to talk seriously.” –By George Russell. Reported by John Borrell/Cairo and Roland Flamini with Peres