Habib, Egypt President Discuss U.S. Peace Plan : Talks With Mubarak Go ‘Extraordinarily’ Well, Envoy Says; Flies to Jordan for More Meetings

U.S. envoy Philip C. Habib met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Sunday, then flew to Amman for talks with Jordanian officials in an effort to keep the Reagan Administration’s latest Middle East peace plan from foundering.

Before leaving for Jordan, Habib told reporters here that his talks with Mubarak went “extraordinarily” well.

Egypt has welcomed the U.S. initiative, but senior officials have warned privately that they see little chance of it succeeding, given Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s steadfast opposition to the main features of the plan.

They have also expressed concern that the plan comes too late and offers too little to satisfy the Palestinians, whose uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip turned the Reagan Administration’s attention again to the long-stagnant peace process.

Won’t Change Plan

Officials said that Habib briefed Mubarak on the outcome of Shamir’s visit to Washington last week and assured him that the United States would not “alter or cut up” the peace plan drafted by Secretary of State George P. Shultz solely because of Shamir’s opposition to it.

The U.S. plan, which the secretary has presented as a take-it-or-leave-it package, calls for Arab-Israeli negotiations to begin next month at a ceremonial peace conference sponsored by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

The main purpose of the conference, which Jordan’s King Hussein insists on having, would be to bestow legitimacy on the start of separate bilateral negotiations favored by Israel. The Shultz plan then envisions two separate but interlocked sets of bilateral negotiations, both to be started this year.

The first, between Israel and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, would seek to work out a formula for a 3-year interim period of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The second set of negotiations, to commence no later than the end of this year, would be aimed at finding a permanent resolution to the Palestinian problem once the transitional autonomy period expired.

Compromise Package

The package represents a compromise between the international forum demanded by Hussein and the bilateral format favored by Israel. But so far, only Egypt and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who heads the centrist Labor Alignment half of Israel’s divided government, have accepted it in principle.

Shamir remains firmly opposed to any form of international opening, fearing that it would increase the pressure on Israel for territorial concessions that his right-wing Likud Bloc is unwilling to make.

On the Arab side, Jordan is more positive about the plan, but Hussein is still understood to have serious misgivings about the minimalist and strictly ceremonial role that Shultz envisions for any international conference. The role to be played by the Palestinians at an international conference, and the manner in which they would be represented, are also unresolved obstacles.

Shamir Is Main Obstacle

At the moment, however, the Reagan Administration tacitly seems to agree with Egypt and Jordan that it is Shamir’s opposition that constitutes the main obstacle. “Although no one is exactly ecstatic about the (U.S.) plan, the consensus on the Arab side is that we could move forward with it, were it not for Shamir,” a senior Egyptian official said.

Still, this official added, Jordan and other Arab moderates are reluctant to endorse the plan, which demands significant concessions on their side as well, if it appears doomed from the outset.

Habib’s swift dispatch to the region, a diplomatic observer said, is meant to bolster Arab support for the plan by assuring them that the United States is not giving up on its peace initiative despite Shamir’s rejection of its main points. “The more encouraging things the Arabs say about (the Shultz plan) at this point,” the source said, “the more helpful it will be.”

Wants Arab Consensus

King Hussein, who earlier this week flew to Saudi Arabia to discuss the American plan with King Fahd, is understood to be seeking an Arab consensus on the plan before giving the United States Jordan’s official response to it. Jordanian officials, hours before Habib’s arrival in Amman, cautioned that the response was not yet ready.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Habib, who will also visit Saudi Arabia and Morocco, was not demanding definite answers on this trip.

“The main reason he’s here is just to try to keep the process alive,” one source said.

However, even if no one is ready yet to openly embrace the Shultz plan, Habib will try to see if the responses being formulated are promising enough to warrant another trip to the region by Shultz, either later this month or in early April, the source added.