Baker Says U.S. to Go Slow on Mideast Policy

The Bush Administration, ignoring a flurry of Soviet Middle East diplomacy, has decided to move slowly and deliberately in fashioning its policy for dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Sunday.

“The risk would be greater in taking precipitous action than it would in waiting a while, analyzing the situation, working on the ground carefully, tilling the ground and making sure that when you do go in there you have some reasonable prospect of success,” he said.

Rejects Activist Role

Baker, who returned Friday from a trip to all 15 member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said he was urged by the Western Europeans to take a more active role in the Middle East. But he made clear that he rebuffed the suggestions.

Baker’s comments on the NBC-TV program “Meet the Press” seemed to concede the initiative in an area long dominated by the United States to the Soviet Union and its foreign minister, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who is making a high-visibility tour of the region.

Shevardnadze originally planned to confer only with Arab leaders during his trip. However, he agreed Saturday to meet later this week in Cairo with Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens, who will travel to the Egyptian capital especially for the talks. On Sunday, Shevardnadze flew to Amman, Jordan, to confer with King Hussein.

The Soviet Union and Israel have not maintained formal diplomatic relations since Moscow broke the ties in 1967 during the Six-Day War. But Arens, named foreign minister in the new Israeli government earlier this year, will confer with Shevardnadze before his first meeting with Baker.

It is most unlikely that the Arens-Shevardnadze talks will damage Israel’s close relationship with the United States. However, the symbolism of the meeting will underline Moscow’s determination to put itself back into the center of the Middle East political equation for the first time in more than a decade.

The Soviet Union has played only a peripheral role in the Middle East since then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger brokered the military disengagement pact that ended the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Later, when it appeared that Moscow would be asked to join Washington in sponsoring a regional peace conference, then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat preempted the conference by staging his dramatic 1977 trip to Jerusalem.

Diplomatic Monopoly

The United States has maintained a virtual monopoly on Middle East diplomacy since the 1978 Camp David conference, which produced the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signed the following year.

Baker, speaking Sunday about his discussions on the Middle East while he was in Europe, said:

“This is a message . . . we have given our alliance partners. We have said, in effect, we understand the importance of United States involvement if we are ever to achieve peace in the Middle East. We understand that, but we’re not sure that the process is best served by a big, high-level, high-visibility international conference begun too early.

“We think there ought to be some quiet consultations done before we get close to that.”

Speaking on behalf of the European members of NATO, Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek of the Netherlands last week urged Baker to take the lead in bringing Israel and its Arab antagonists to the conference table.

Shevardnadze, too, is calling for an early conference to tackle the Arab-Israeli dispute.

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz advocated an international conference to be attended by the parties to the dispute along with the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China. Shultz envisioned the conference as a way of launching direct negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Under the Shultz plan, the conference would have no power to impose a settlement or to veto an agreement acceptable to Israel and any of the Arab parties. The Soviet Union, joined by most Arab states, want the international conference to play a more active role in settling the dispute.

Shamir Opposes Concept

Baker should have no trouble in delaying the start of an international conference, because Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir opposes the concept. The talks would serve no purpose without Israeli participation, and it is generally acknowledged that Israel will not participate unless persuaded to do so by the United States.

However, Baker’s reluctance to act on the conference issue could pass the initiative to the Soviets or the Western Europeans.

On a related topic, Baker said the United States has rejected Israel’s contention that a recent armed skirmish in southern Lebanon between Israeli troops and a radical Palestinian faction constituted a breach of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s renunciation of terrorism.

However, Baker said the United States reminded PLO officials that the new U.S.-PLO dialogue will continue only as long as the PLO avoids terrorist actions.

Asked about last week’s agreement by five Central American presidents to disarm the Nicaraguan Contras in exchange for free elections and democratic reforms by the Sandinista regime in Managua, Baker responded with a point-by-point reiteration of President Bush’s analysis of the pact.

As Bush did Thursday, Baker said the United States finds some elements of the agreement promising. But he said the Administration is determined to provide some form of humanitarian aid to the Contras after the current $27-million package expires March 31.