Israelis Say Peres Has No New Peace Formula

Senior Israeli government officials said Tuesday that Prime Minister Shimon Peres did not take any new Middle East peace plan with him to his Moroccan summit meeting with King Hassan II.

But, they added, the meeting nonetheless is a watershed that should give Israel important additional legitimacy in the Arab world. And, while it probably will not mean any breakthrough, it is possible that the “clarification of positions” expected at the summit might spark new approaches that could bring progress to the stalled regional peace process.

“There is no special plan that the prime minister is carrying with him,” Cabinet Secretary Yossi Beilin said in an Israel radio interview. “I don’t think that here there is a meeting for the purpose of negotiation. In this case, there is, first of all . . . a chance to get to know the positions of each side.”

Another high government source said that, given the constraints of the centrist prime minister’s agreement with his rightist Likud Bloc partners in Israel’s “national unity” coalition, “he has no mandate to offer something more than good will” to the Moroccan monarch.

Foreign Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who heads Likud and is expected to trade jobs with Peres in October, said the trip was planned with his knowledge, if not necessarily with his blessing. He added that he will withhold comment on it until after Peres reports to the government on his return.

However, asked if he would continue with any peace initiative that might come out of the Peres trip after becoming prime minister under the unique rotation provision of their power-sharing agreement, Shamir commented, “If we will agree to the contents of these talks, we will continue it.

“We are ready to listen to any proposal,” Shamir added. “If there will be proposals about the future of the country, we will have to discuss it in the framework of the Cabinet, and then we will decide if we agree or not.”

There has been speculation here that one reason Hassan was ready to meet Peres openly at this time was his concern that hopes for progress toward Mideast negotiations would dim considerably after the rotation of Israeli leaders.

Peres is known to favor direct negotiations with Jordan’s King Hussein as the next major step in the peace process, although he has said he would be willing to conduct talks within the framework of an international peace conference under the right conditions.

Jordan and most other Arab nations insist on an international conference under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council and including participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. However, Peres’ talks with Hassan follow a break between Hussein and PLO leader Yasser Arafat, whose impact on peace prospects is still unclear.

Ironically, while everyone here from the president and Cabinet ministers on down seemed to be evaluating the surprise summit Tuesday, the government would not even officially confirm that Peres had gone.

Officials said the government position stemmed from a prior agreement with Hassan that there would be no announcement of the talks until after they were over.

Unofficially, senior officials here said that the Morocco summit was several months in the making and that key personalities included in the arrangements were Peres’ top political adviser and a wealthy Moroccan Jew with good contacts with the king.

Peres is said to have met with an emissary of the king while on a trip to Paris three months ago.

More recently, David Ammar, a leader of Morocco’s 18,000-member Jewish community, reportedly arrived here for a secret meeting with Peres carrying Hassan’s agreement, in principle, for a summit.

Final details were agreed upon during another secret visit the weekend before last, according to government sources--this one a trip to Morocco by Peres’ political adviser, Nimrod Novik, who is accompanying the Israeli leader at the summit.

Both Israeli and diplomatic sources here said that, while Washington encouraged the meeting and was kept informed of the contacts, all the organization and logistics of the summit were handled bilaterally between Morocco and Israel.

Criticized on Right, Left

Meanwhile, Parliament members from both the extreme left and the extreme right criticized Peres’ trip.

Mati Peled, deputy head of the leftist Progressive List For Peace, charged that it is all a publicity stunt meant to deceive the public into thinking that the prime minister is ready to make real concessions for peace with the Palestinians.

But Geula Cohen, a leader of the right-wing Tehiya (Renaissance) Party, said she fears that Peres is ready to give back part of the occupied West Bank, which her movement contends is an inalienable part of “the Land of Israel.”