Jordan Seen Urging Syria to Ease Peace Stand

Prime Minister Zaid Rifai of Jordan traveled to Damascus on Sunday in an apparent effort to persuade Syria to soften its opposition to the latest U.S. peace initiative in the Middle East.

Syrian officials said that Rifai held several hours of talks with President Hafez Assad, but no details of their discussions were made public.

Western diplomats said that Rifai, who is known for his close contacts with the Syrians, was hoping to convince Assad of the need to allow the American initiative to proceed at least to the stage where American “concepts” are formulated into specific proposals.

Flat Rejection

Syria issued an unequivocal rejection of the American initiative Saturday, saying that “if the United States wants to activate the Camp David process--which failed on the ground--during its new move, it will achieve total failure.” The Camp David agreement was the American-sponsored blueprint for peace between Israel and Egypt drafted in 1978.

A Western diplomat termed the carefully worded Syrian rejection a “significant” setback to the peace process.

A commentary on Damascus radio, which was used by the Syrian government to express its views on the latest proposals, said that “partial and unilateral deals which contradict the spirit of the United Nations resolutions are rejected.”

The latest peace proposals were brought to the area earlier this month by Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy in the face of the violent uprising by Palestinians protesting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip.

Shultz Visit

Before the Syrian statement, the State Department had announced that Secretary of State George P. Shultz would visit the Middle East in late February, after a visit to Moscow. Shultz reportedly plans to visit Israel, Egypt and Jordan, with possible stops in Syria and Saudi Arabia as well.

Speaking to reporters in Damascus on Saturday, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh said that the Reagan Administration appears to have ideas for a settlement that have not yet crystallized into a concrete set of proposals.

“Our impression is the American Administration, although talking about a comprehensive solution, still thinks of a partial solution,” Shareh said. “We’ve made clear that we’re totally against this.”

Talks on Self-Rule

So far, the only detailed account of the Murphy proposals has appeared in Israel, where Israeli officials told reporters that the U.S. envoy was proposing to hold a brief international conference in April to be followed by six months of talks on an interim agreement on Palestinian self-rule. At year’s end, negotiations would begin on a permanent settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In his remarks to reporters, Shareh said that an international conference should “be real and not just an umbrella.”

In Jordan, officials have publicly welcomed the revived U.S. interest in the peace process, but they have remained wary of committing themselves to the U.S. position.

Rifai, speaking in a broadcast interview, said the main purpose of any settlement will be the final status of the occupied territories, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israeli Withdrawal

“Interim arrangements or autonomy or what have you are only steps on the way,” Rifai said. “What counts is the final, ultimate settlement, and that entails Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.”

In contrast to the Israeli version of Murphy’s proposals, Rifai spoke of a full-scale international conference involving the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council as well as Jordan, Syria and the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, head of the right-wing Likud Bloc, has expressed unyielding opposition to the international conference idea, while Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, leader of the moderate Labor Alignment, has accepted the concept.

Speaking privately, Jordanian officials have said that the “new concept” in the American proposals was a fixed schedule for negotiations that is designed to guarantee that Israel would not be able to delay discussions on the final status of the occupied territories after arriving at an interim accord.

‘Organic Link’

The Jordanians said that under this proposal, there would be “an organic link” between the transition period and the final settlement. They described the American proposal as a “skeleton that needs to be filled out.”

There remain great differences between the various sides, however, about such basic questions as what a transition period would represent. The Jordanians regard the so-called interim period--some suggest three years--as a period for phased implementation of an overall peace settlement, while the Israelis regard it as being equivalent to the Camp David accord’s provisions for giving autonomy to the Palestinians.

King Hussein of Jordan was reported to have expressed repeated doubts that Shamir would accept the latest American proposals, asking that the Israeli government issue a statement confirming that it would honor a timetable for talks.

Lack of Resolve

The Jordanians evidently feel that the United States, which has undertaken to get Shamir’s agreement, has never before encouraged Shamir to be flexible. A recent U.S. veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution on the West Bank uprising was seen here as showing a lack of U.S. resolve to demonstrate that it could bring pressure to bear on Israel.

An American envoy, Philip C. Habib, who visited Jordan last month, was reported to have insisted that Palestinians would only be allowed to participate in the talks as part of a Jordanian delegation, while Jordan said that the Palestinians should be invited separately.

King Hussein was said to have told the Americans that Jordan insisted that a final settlement must include a total Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, permitting only minor border alterations. Israel has consistently opposed such sweeping territorial compromise.