Mubarak, Peres Discuss ‘New Ideas’ for Talks

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres conferred with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday and said afterward that they discussed “new ideas” about Palestinian representation at a proposed Mideast peace conference.

Peres, citing a need for secrecy at this stage of the talks, refused to elaborate on the new proposals he said were raised in more than two hours of discussions with Mubarak.

However, Israeli officials said that a second, unplanned meeting with Mubarak has been scheduled for today to give the two men time to continue their discussions before Peres’ scheduled return to Israel later in the day.

Peres, talking with reporters after his meeting with Mubarak, indicated that their talks focused on proposals for a U.N.-sponsored international peace conference and on the thorniest and most controversial aspect of such a conference--Palestinian participation.

‘New Ideas Discussed’

“We discussed some new ideas, but nothing that I can announce as a new step yet,” Peres said when asked about the Arab-Israeli differences over Palestinian participation.

He said those ideas will be explored further in his follow-up meeting with Mubarak but indicated that nothing could be decided or disclosed until it has been discussed with Jordan--indirectly, through Egypt.

“We have to be discreet now,” Peres said.

Efforts to agree on the form and content of an international peace conference began in earnest last year when Peres, who was then prime minister, dropped Israel’s objections to such a conference in the hope of bringing Jordan to the negotiating table.

Wants U.N. Role

Jordan, unwilling to endure the kind of censure and isolation that befell Egypt in the Arab world after it signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979, has insisted on opening negotiations under the international umbrella of the U.N. Security Council.

Israel had long objected to this because it would necessarily include a role for the Soviet Union, a permanent member of the council. The Soviets could, in turn, be expected to insist on a role in the talks for the Palestine Liberation Organization, with which Israeli leaders have refused to negotiate.

Under the formula now envisaged by Mubarak, Peres and Jordan’s King Hussein, the Security Council’s role in any peace talks would be largely symbolic. After opening ceremonies, the conference would break up into the direct Israeli-Jordanian negotiations favored by Israel.

But the question of how and by whom the Palestinians would be represented in these subsequent negotiations has blocked further progress toward an agreement.

Shamir Opposes Talks

An additional complication is the position of Peres’ successor as prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, who still objects to the idea of an international conference on grounds that any kind of participation by the Soviet Union in the peace process would lead to demands for Israeli territorial concessions on the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.