Administration Hints It Might Welcome Independent Palestinian Peace Delegates

The Reagan Administration, struggling to develop a new approach to the Middle East peace process to replace the one that Jordan’s King Hussein has demolished, hinted Friday that it might welcome an independent Palestinian delegation to the negotiating table.

“Presumably they (the Palestinians) will have to be directly represented rather than under the umbrella of Jordan,” said Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead, apparently writing the final epitaph to years of U.S. efforts to bring Palestinians into the peace process as part of a joint delegation led by Jordan.

Shortly after Whitehead was interviewed on a U.S. Information Agency television broadcast to Europe, State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley sought to soften the impact of his comments. She said there was no change in the American position that a “joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation offers the best hope” for an Arab-Israeli settlement.

However, Hussein, by cutting his kingdom free of much of its longstanding relationship with Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, torpedoed the last, lingering possibility that Washington could succeed in bringing about peace talks between Israel and a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, in four exhausting Middle East shuttle trips this year, has promoted a comprehensive peace plan calling for an international conference followed by direct negotiations between Israel and its Arab adversaries. Shultz said repeatedly that Palestinians would have to be included in the talks but only as part of a joint delegation with Jordan. For instance, on March 4 he said that the Palestinians must be represented by such a delegation, and “we have to convince them that that is the case.”

Shultz never succeeded in convincing the Palestinians. Hussein now has pulled away from such a delegation as well.

When the Hashemite monarch announced his intentions in a speech last weekend, U.S. officials suggested that he might take only a symbolic--and easily reversible--action. However, in a series of follow-up steps this week, Hussein has shown that he is serious about cutting his ties to the West Bank, which Jordan administered from 1948 until Israeli forces seized it during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Many analysts still believe that Hussein’s ultimate objective is to prove to both Israelis and Palestinians that they cannot get along without him. This may be so. But if Hussein is playing a game, Middle East experts in Washington now believe, it is a slow-developing tactic that will not be played out before general elections are held in Israel on Nov. 1 and the United States on Nov. 8.

‘Get the Posture Right’

William B. Quandt, a former National Security Council Middle East expert, said Hussein’s decision leaves the Shultz initiative “pretty academic.” But he said the Reagan Administration would perform a significant service for its successor--regardless of whether the new government is headed by Vice President George Bush or Gov. Michael Dukakis--by starting a national debate about Palestinian representation.

“The United States should be discussing an independent role for Palestinians,” said Quandt, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Maybe that is all the Administration can do before the elections. At least they should get the posture right.”

Palestinian representation may be the most knotty problem in the Middle East. All Arab governments--including Jordan’s--maintain that the Palestine Liberation Organization is the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Most Palestinians express allegiance to the PLO. However, Israel and the United States refuse to deal with the organization.

The now-sidetracked Jordan-Palestinian delegation formula was devised to finesse the PLO issue. Whitehead’s comments about an independent Palestinian representation stopped well short of any suggestion that the PLO might provide that representation.

Elaborating on Whitehead’s remarks, Oakley said: “Obviously, the situation has changed, . . . but let me repeat that our position has not changed. I don’t think that these statements are contradictory. He is musing somewhat.”

But Whitehead’s musing seemed to fit a pattern. The day before, Vernon A. Walters, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said, “I think that . . . eventually you will have to have some sort of Palestinian delegation at the peace talks.”

Both Whitehead and Walters spoke on U.S. Information Agency interview programs prepared for broadcast abroad. By using foreign interview programs to deliver the message, the Administration probably hopes to launch a discussion of the issue without placing too much emphasis on it for the time being.