U.S. Bid to Include Jordan, Israel at Summit Said to Fail

U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz invited Jordan’s King Hussein and top Israeli leaders to join President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the December superpower summit in Washington in a dramatic attempt to break through the current stalemate in the Middle East peace process, it was reported here today.

Hussein “was tempted” by the proposal when Shultz first advanced it during a meeting in London last month, according to “informed sources in London” quoted in today’s editions of the English-language Jerusalem Post. However, the sources are quoted as saying, the monarch “backed away” from the plan after details of it were leaked to the press.

In Washington, U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity described the report as “relatively accurate,” although they indicated that Hussein rejected the idea almost immediately. The U.S. officials also dismissed speculation by unnamed Israeli sources quoted in the Jerusalem Post who said the proposed “summit at the summit” might still be possible.

Outgrowth of Deadlock

The Shultz initiative is said to be an outgrowth of a political deadlock within Israel over a proposed international Middle East peace conference that Hussein had been promoting. The king wants the conference called by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China--in order to provide an international “umbrella” over direct negotiations with Israel. Without such an umbrella, he reasons, Jordan’s more militant Arab neighbors would almost certainly oppose talks with Israel.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, head of the Labor Alignment and leader of the leftist half of the governing “national unity” coalition, supports an international conference, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, head of the rightist Likud Bloc which makes up the other half of the coalition, adamantly rejects the idea.

According to the Jerusalem Post story, the Shultz plan was inspired by Shamir, who saw it both as a way around the international forum and as a way to exclude both the Palestine Liberation Organization and Syria from peace talks.

Other government sources here insist that the idea was originally Peres’ and that he wanted Shultz to push it because that would make it more acceptable to Shamir.

In any case, Shultz reportedly raised the idea with Hussein during meetings in London immediately after his Israel visit. The secretary was on his way to Moscow for meetings with Gorbachev.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Hussein scotched the plan after details of it were published in the Boston Globe.

However, according to U.S. officials in Washington, Hussein had already rejected the idea before Shultz left for Moscow on Oct. 21. In fact, the Globe reported on Oct. 23 that the plan might have already been killed by premature publicity in the Israeli press about the possibility of an unspecified form of U.S.-Soviet sponsorship for peace talks as an alternative to the international conference.

According to details first published in the Globe, the plan was for Hussein and Shamir to meet in Washington after the signing by Reagan and Gorbachev of a treaty banning medium-range nuclear missiles. The first meeting was to be followed quickly by actual negotiations.

In fact, Shultz reportedly never brought up the “summit at the summit” idea with Gorbachev. A senior State Department official who traveled with the secretary said on their arrival in Moscow that the idea of joint U.S.-Soviet sponsorship for Middle East peace talks was not “something you are pursuing” and that it would not be raised with the Soviet leader.

U.S. officials explained Thursday that the statements were technically true since Hussein had already rejected the plan.

As recently as Oct. 29, a senior Israeli official told The Times that a proposal was in the works that could serve as a “shortcut” toward the opening of peace talks. The official refused to provide details, saying that the plan was a closely held secret.