Mubarak Conciliatory to Israel, at U.S. Behest

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, responding to urging by the United States, has taken several conciliatory steps toward Israel in hopes of encouraging Israeli moderates and reviving the Middle East peace process.

He has done so at the risk of alienating opposition figures at home and less moderate Arabs abroad, but his strategy appears to be part of a grander game plan--to be in the best possible bargaining position when he meets President Reagan in Washington in March.

Mubarak’s Washington trip has become the focus of what Egyptian officials are billing as a “wide-ranging diplomatic drive” in which the Egyptian president is expected to seek greatly increased U.S. economic and military assistance and direct dialogue between Washington and the Palestine Liberation Organization, possibly within the framework of Reagan’s Mideast peace initiative.

“We still hope all parties concerned, even with reservations, will agree to the (Reagan) plan to push the peace process forward,” Mubarak told Peking’s official New China News Agency this month. The Reagan plan calls for a Palestinian political entity, situated in the West Bank of the Jordan River and having some form of association with Jordan.

U.S. diplomats here have urged Mubarak for several months to signal his recognition that Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is not a hard-liner like his predecessors. This, they believe, would strengthen the moderates’ position in Israel, which in turn could nudge moderate Arab governments toward joining Egypt and Jordan in the peace process.

Mubarak has responded by ordering the semiofficial Egyptian press to soften its attacks on the Israeli government and by reducing the isolation of the Israeli ambassador here, Moshe Sasson, giving him better access to senior Egyptian officials.

Most significantly, Mubarak agreed to a resumption of high-level discussions with Israel, which were suspended in the aftermath of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The talks are expected to begin Jan. 20 in Beersheba, Israel. The Egyptian delegation will be led by Foreign Ministry official Abdel-Halim Badawi.

The talks will deal with which country should have sovereignty over Taba, a one-square-mile piece of Israeli-occupied territory in the Sinai Peninsula.

Significant First Step Although Western political analysts do not expect any dramatic results, they consider the fact that Israel and Egypt are meeting at all a significant first step toward improving the atmosphere between the two countries.

Egyptian and U.S. officials believe that there can be no real progress toward a regional settlement unless Jordan and Yasser Arafat’s relatively moderate wing of the PLO form a united front. Procedural talks have been under way for a month, but Arafat has been unwilling to take a firm position on the issue, and there are doubts that progress is being made.

In the meantime, Washington has been reluctant to take the lead in any new push for a settlement. Its position is that Reagan’s initiative remains on the table and that the divisions within the Arab world and the nature of Peres’ national unity coalition in Israel minimize the chances for success.

Mubarak, his aides say, will try to persuade Reagan to increase the tempo of U.S. diplomatic activity. Like most Arab leaders, he believes that the present stagnation of the peace effort creates a dangerous vacuum.

The Egyptian president also is expected to ask Washington for almost $1 billion more than the $1 billion in economic aid and $1.2 billion in military assistance that his government will receive this fiscal year.

Israel is expected to get a huge increase in U.S. aid in the next fiscal year. Under assurances made by then-President Jimmy Carter in connection with the Camp David accords, aid to Egypt is to rise in proportion to increases for Israel.