U.S. Dialogue With PLO Forces Bush Priority Shift

President-elect George Bush’s Administration will take office next month deeply skeptical about the value of the new U.S. dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization because top officials believe PLO leader Yasser Arafat has very little incentive for reaching a peace settlement.

Nonetheless, Bush has concluded that President Reagan’s opening to the PLO stirred what had been a relatively stagnant situation in the Middle East and created a volatility in the region that the new Administration must address promptly.

As a result, Bush believes he will be compelled to set aside an earlier plan to put the Middle East on a back burner for the opening months of his presidency and instead will give the Arab-Israeli conflict a much higher priority.

Reflecting the underlying skepticism, sources familiar with the thinking of those at the upper levels of the new Administration say it is a mistake to consider the talks with the PLO to be a breakthrough for American policy.

On the contrary, these sources say, the talks themselves represent a political victory for Arafat, which he will enjoy as long as the dialogue continues. But it could be dangerous for the PLO chief to reach any sort of agreement with the United States because that would almost certainly anger some elements of the fractious organization.

Thus, Arafat has more reason to drag out the talks than to bring them to a conclusion that Washington would regard as a success.

Since his election last month, Bush and his associates have sent signals that they wanted to make the Middle East a low priority because none of the conditions seem to be present that historically have been necessary for progress toward a solution in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In the past, for example, progress had resulted in the aftermath of a war or from strong outside political pressures, such as those that led the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to visit Jerusalem in 1977 and later become the first Arab leader to sign a peace agreement with Israel.

Clear Approach Lacking

Now, however, it is understood that although the chances of success may be as dim as before, the new Administration has concluded that it is no longer possible to ignore the situation or to try to buy time with political theatrics. At the same time, no clear approach seems to have emerged from Bush’s pre-inaugural foreign policy deliberations.

Last week, according to reports from Israel, Labor Party leader Shimon Peres told a party caucus that Bush was considering the appointment of former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger as a special envoy to the Middle East. It seems clear that such a strategy once was under consideration but now appears to have been abandoned.

The plan, it is now understood, was to send Kissinger on a high-profile trip to take soundings, reassure friendly political leaders on both sides of the conflict and issue a report. The objective was to show that the new Administration is concerned about the Middle East without engaging in substantive actions that would be unlikely to succeed. Apparently, Bush has decided that such an approach no longer is viable.

Cautious Approach Seen

Non-government Middle East experts predict that Bush will be extremely cautious in pursuing the PLO dialogue that began last week in Tunis when Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, met with a high-level delegation from the organization that Washington long has accused of sponsoring terrorism.

When Secretary of State George P. Shultz announced the end of a 13-year U.S. diplomatic boycott of the PLO, he said the Reagan Administration could do no more than begin the talks, leaving it to the Bush Administration to determine the direction of the new relationship.

“I think it is going to be very slow,” said Joyce Starr, a Middle East specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Especially in light of a united Israeli government’s position against talks with the PLO, we will be very careful in our approach. I don’t think anyone should think that this is (like) a Sadat trip to Jerusalem.”

Broad Channel for Talks

William B. Quandt, a former National Security Council Middle East expert in the Carter Administration now at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the Administration probably will use the new channel to the PLO more widely than officials anticipate.

However, he said it would be a good strategy for Bush to minimize the importance of the PLO contact.

“This is not a time to get expectations way up,” Quandt said. “If they (Bush Administration officials) do see any kind of opening, then of course they will use the channel to the PLO if they think it can help.”

Samuel Lewis, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he thought the new Israeli government formed this week might decide to permit municipal elections in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for the first time in a decade. If that occurs, he said, Washington could use its new contact with the PLO to urge the organization to permit the balloting to take place without interference.

The Bush Administration is known to believe that Israel already has missed a golden opportunity to permit an indigenous Palestinian leadership to develop as a result of the yearlong uprising in the occupied territories. According to this view, if Israel had tried to negotiate with leaders of the intifada, as the uprising is called, instead of jailing or deporting them, the local leaders might have become a counterweight to the PLO.

One of the drawbacks to the U.S.-PLO dialogue, as viewed by the incoming Administration, is that it will increase the PLO’s claim to being the only representative of the Palestinian people.