Morocco Summit Leaves Questions : Talks More Substantive Than Indicated, Diplomats Say

King Hassan II’s account of his historic summit meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres raises more questions than it answers and is fueling speculation that the two leaders discussed Middle East peace prospects in more depth and detail than the Moroccan monarch has publicly admitted, according to Western diplomats here.

Indeed, it seems clear from the risks that Hassan took in inviting Peres to Morocco, the duration of their talks and other factors that the king’s version of events leaves a number of matters unexplained, the diplomats said.

Hassan, only the second Arab head of state to meet openly with an Israeli head of government, held 10 hours of talks with Peres at a remote and heavily guarded hilltop palace 125 miles east of Rabat. Delegations from the two sides met for longer sessions during the two days of talks.

Hassan, in a somber televised address hours after the talks ended Wednesday night, said he invited Peres to Morocco to explore the chances of reviving the floundering Mideast peace process under the terms of the Fez Plan.

Adopted by the Arabs at a summit meeting in Fez, Morocco, in 1982, the Fez Plan offered Israel peace within secure and recognized boundaries, provided it agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state on land captured from the Arabs during the 1967 Middle East War.

Peres’ Refusal

In his TV speech, the monarch indicated that the talks failed when Peres refused to consider negotiating with the Palestine Liberation Organization or withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders.

“Since you do not accept these two priorities, there is no point in continuing the conversation. . . . I have nothing more to say to a man who rejects the PLO as the sole and valid interlocutor (for the Palestinians) and refuses to evacuate the territories--except goodby,” Hassan said he told Peres.

However, this account has been greeted with considerable skepticism by senior diplomats here who, while stressing that they have not yet been briefed by Moroccan officials on the details of the talks, said it was inconceivable to them that the discussions did not involve “much more give-and-take on more serious proposals.”

Noting that Hassan risks censure by the Arab world for meeting with Peres, one diplomatic source said it seemed “impossible that he would take such a chance just to formally present to Peres a well-known four-year-old proposal that he knows Israel will reject out of hand.”

“If all the king did was to ask Peres to accept the Fez Plan, what did they do over two days of intense discussions? It does not take 10 hours of talks to say no, no and then goodby,” another diplomat said.

The diplomats noted that Hassan’s invitation to Peres was in some ways a typically dramatic gesture for the Moroccan monarch, who is known to favor bold diplomatic maneuvers and to want to play a central role in the Middle East, despite Morocco’s geographically and culturally distant position on the periphery of the Arab-Israeli dispute.

“This is in character with the role in which he has always wanted to cast himself as a mediator and as one of the only Arab leaders who can help bring about peace in the Middle East,” one analyst said.

Diplomats added that Hassan had become frustrated by the lack of progress in the peace process, stalemated since February when Jordan’s King Hussein suspended an agreement with the PLO to jointly seek peace negotiations with Israel.

“Hassan apparently felt it was time for him to take the initiative” since those more directly responsible for the peace process were getting nowhere, one diplomat said. “Morocco is currently chairman of the Arab League and, apart from feeling a special responsibility, Hassan knows he may not have this chance again,” the diplomat added.

Other sources noted that, by thrusting himself into the peace process, Hassan may also be seeking to maneuver Morocco further away from Libya and closer to the United States. Although the Moroccan monarch has always been considered pro-Western, his ties with Washington were strained two years ago when he signed a unity agreement with Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

The agreement, at the time, was widely viewed as a way of getting Kadafi to suspend arms shipments to Polisario Front guerrillas with whom Morocco had been waging a costly 10-year war for control of the Western Sahara.

“Now that the Polisario has been crushed militarily, Hassan is looking for ways to improve his relations with the United States,” which gives Morocco $110 million a year in aid, a diplomat said.

Risks for Hassan

While the unity agreement is technically still in effect, relations with Libya “are at a real low point and Hassan may not be terribly concerned if Kadafi now decides to sever the accord,” another diplomat said.

Nevertheless, Hassan is running “enormous risks” by stepping outside the Arab consensus to meet with Peres, a diplomat said.

For one thing, while the exact amount has not been publicly disclosed, the economic aid provided to Morocco by Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states is “considerable” and Morocco, which has few foreign reserves and a $13-billion foreign debt, could find itself “in dire financial straits if it were cut off,” one diplomat said.

And although Hassan seems to be trying to win a central diplomatic role for himself in the Arab world with his peace initiative, the possibility of censure or even expulsion from the Arab League could result in his being irreversibly isolated instead, other diplomats noted.

This in turn has added to the speculation that there must be more to Hassan’s gamble than meets the eye.

“To be sure, Hassan is a gambler. But a gambler doesn’t play unless he has some cards in his hands,” one Western diplomat said. “He could not possibly have hoped that Peres would come here and say yes to the Fez Plan and yes to the PLO, which makes me suspect that there was much more to the talks than just the Fez Plan,” the diplomat continued. “However, whether progress was made is another question.”