Still Objects to Plan, Shamir Tells Shultz : Secretary Hopes to Lay Peace Basis for Next Administration

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir on Sunday refused to budge in his opposition to key elements of Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s peace initiative, but Shultz vowed to continue his shuttle diplomacy even if his only remaining hope is to leave a “constructive and positive” Middle East picture for the next Administration.

Talking to reporters just before he left Israel after more than three hours of meetings with Shamir, Shultz admitted, “As far as a major shift in anybody’s position, I can’t report that.”

However, Shultz said he is determined to “stay engaged” in the complex search for a way to bring Israel and its Arab adversaries to the bargaining table.

‘Do Everything We Can’

He said the Reagan government will “do everything we can for the balance of this Administration to accomplish as much as we can and leave our successors as constructive and positive a situation as we can possibly manage.”

The remarks were a sharp contrast to Shultz’s comments earlier in the day when he admonished Shamir that it was “an illusion” for Israeli hard-liners to believe that they can continue for long the military domination of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“The continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the frustration of Palestinian rights is a dead-end street,” Shultz said. “The belief that it can continue is an illusion.”

But Shamir’s top aide, Yossi Ben Aharon, shrugged off Shultz’s wording.

Must Live With Status Quo

“We may have to live with the status quo in the absence of any readiness on the part of our neighbors to negotiate with us,” Ben Aharon, director general of the prime minister’s office, told reporters.

Shultz, who met Saturday in Amman with Jordan’s King Hussein, said he told Shamir that the Hashemite monarch wants some assurance that Israel is prepared to trade territory for peace before agreeing to open negotiations.

“I explained the belief on King Hussein’s side that there must be something to negotiate about,” Shultz said.

Ben Aharon said that Shamir would never agree to any “precondition” for negotiations with Jordan. He accused Hussein of trying to lock up the results of the talks before agreeing to begin them.

“We want to negotiate without preconditions, and we will not accept any precondition including territory,” Ben Aharon said. He accused Hussein of trying to use Shultz to negotiate on Jordan’s behalf.

“We would prefer to have King Hussein put those positions to us directly,” he said.

Shamir, leader of the rightist Likud Bloc in Israel’s coalition government, reaffirmed his objection to Shultz’s call for an international conference to serve as a forum for direct talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors. And he repeated his objection to Shultz’s plan to begin talks about the final status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip within six months of an agreement on interim measures for the territories.

The two provisions that Shamir opposes form the heart of the Shultz proposal, which the secretary of state describes as so carefully balanced between the views of Arabs and Israelis that any change to accommodate one side would make the proposal totally unacceptable to the other.

Shultz met twice with Shamir, once at the prime minister’s office and later over dinner at his residence. In between, he held far more amiable talks with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, leader of the centrist Labor Alignment and a supporter of the Shultz plan. Likud and Labor have equal representation in the policy-making Cabinet and thus, in effect, the firm opposition of either can block any change in policy.

Peres, who referred to Shultz as “Dear George,” said that the secretary of state’s trip to the region “sends a loud and clear message . . . of hope, a message of choice.” Peres said that nations of the region must choose “between continued arms race, fanaticism, fundamentalism and other manifestations of extremism and the tough decisions required to block these trends.”

Israel has general elections scheduled for November that are expected to decide whether the Shamir or the Peres approach to the peace process will prevail.

A senior Peres aide said the foreign minister hopes that Shultz will continue his Middle East shuttle to “leave us a window of opportunity that will remain open until November. There is life after November.”