Shamir Revives Plan for Mideast Talks at Summit

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir on Wednesday volunteered to go to Moscow for a ceremonial opening to Middle East peace talks, reviving a previously discarded plan as an alternative to an American proposal he firmly opposes.

Shamir suggested that President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev invite Arab and Israeli leaders to join their summit scheduled for May or June in Moscow as a step that would give “international legitimacy” to direct negotiations among the Middle Eastern antagonists.

The plan, originally proposed last October when it was tied to the December superpowers summit in Washington, was rejected at that time by Jordan’s King Hussein. A senior Reagan Administration official said Wednesday that, in light of the monarch’s objections, “there wouldn’t be much point in proposing it again.”

Shamir met with Reagan for about two hours Wednesday as he neared the end of an official visit to Washington. Although spokesmen on both sides insisted that the meetings were cordial, the talks ended in total stalemate. Shamir, who flies to Los Angeles today, refused to budge in his opposition to the U.S. peace plan, and Reagan said Washington will not change it.

Nevertheless, officials on both sides said that the American mediation effort will continue and that Secretary of State George P. Shultz may return to the region soon, perhaps as early as next month.

Shamir told a press conference that he objects to both of the major features of the plan Shultz unveiled March 4--an accelerated timetable for negotiations and an international conference to kick off the talks.

Because the Israeli Cabinet has not taken a stand on the proposal, the prime minister was not authorized to reject it formally. Unless Shamir softens his personal objections, however, there is no chance of ultimate Cabinet approval.

Reagan, hoping to keep the American proposal afloat, seized on the fact that Shamir had not yet turned it down. However, the President seemed to rule out the changes in the U.S. proposal that Shamir has demanded as the price for his approval.

“The United States will not slice this initiative apart and will not abandon it,” Reagan said.

“Those who will say ‘no’ to the U.S. plan--and the prime minister has not used this word--need not answer to us. They’ll need to answer to themselves and their people as to why they turned down a realistic and sensible plan to achieve negotiations.”

Expanding on Reagan’s comments, a senior Administration official said: “We are not pressuring Israel. The situation in the region is what is pressuring Israel, Jordan and all the others.”

He conceded that the reason no party has formally rejected the U.S. plan may be that “no one wants to be the first” to turn it down.

PLO Opposed

Jordanian and Syrian leaders have said they are skeptical about the plan. The Palestine Liberation Organization, which remains very influential among Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, has called for a boycott of the Shultz initiative because the PLO is not invited to participate in the talks.

According to a U.S. official who attended the meeting, Reagan told Shamir: “The PLO is once again revealing its real intent. It says ‘no’ to peace and ‘yes’ to terrorism.”

When Shamir arrived in the United States on Monday, he said he was bringing “new ideas” to break the stalemate. But his remarks at the Wednesday press conference made it clear that the ideas were really old ones.

In addition to his suggestion that Middle East talks could be piggybacked on the Reagan-Gorbachev summit, Shamir called for a resumption of negotiations over the Palestinian “autonomy” plan advanced a decade ago after the U.S.-mediated talks between Israel and Egypt at Camp David, Md.

Limited Self-Rule

The Camp David accords called for five years of limited self-rule for the 1.4 million Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza. Under that plan, negotiations over the “final status” of the territories would begin after three years of autonomy. The plan never got off the ground because Jordan and the Palestinians--the Arab parties most directly involved--rejected the formula. The Palestinians feared that it would never give them the right to do more than handle their own municipal services, such as garbage collection.

Shamir said that, in his talks with Reagan, “We made it clear that it will be difficult for us to have confidence in future agreements if the Camp David accords are discarded.”

The main business of the 1978 Camp David conference was peace between Israel and Egypt. The two countries signed a peace treaty a year later that has remained in force.

In an uncompromising statement at the start of his press conference, Shamir ridiculed the contention by Jordan’s Hussein that Israeli-Jordanian talks are possible only under the auspices of an international conference. He said Jordan is a “sovereign state” that can enter negotiations if it wants to.