Shevardnadze Pushes for ‘Historic Compromise’

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, outlining the Kremlin’s ideas for a Middle East peace settlement in a major policy speech Thursday, called upon Arabs and Israelis to abandon “old prejudices” and seize the “chance for a historic compromise now within their reach.”

Expressing disappointment with a remark by President Bush, who said Wednesday that he believes the Soviets should play only a limited role in the peace process, Shevardnadze also called upon the new Administration in Washington to set aside superpower rivalry in favor of “constructive cooperation” to help end the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Soviet official, noting that detente has already helped to resolve regional conflicts in Afghanistan, southern Africa and other parts of the globe, said that superpower cooperation must also be extended to the Middle East, where the proliferation of missiles, chemical agents and other weapons of mass destruction is increasing at a rate that threatens not only the countries of the region but the interests of the outside powers as well.

Fears ‘Nuclear Face-Off’

Alluding to what is believed to be Israel’s nuclear capability and the effort by some Arab countries to duplicate it, he warned of the possibility of a “nuclear face-off” that could doom the region to destruction.

“Unless a peaceful, comprehensive political settlement is found to the Arab-Israeli conflict, developments in the region will follow a spiral wound by the logic of military confrontation,” he said.

Addressing an audience of diplomats, legislators and media members at the headquarters of Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party, Shevardnadze also:

-- Called for the creation of a nuclear- and chemical weapons-free zone in the Middle East.

-- Advocated a regional attempt, similar to East-West arms reduction talks, to scale down the arms race in the Middle East.

-- Said that, while the Soviet Union is seeking to improve its relations with Israel, it will not restore formal diplomatic ties to the Jewish state until its government agrees to attend an international conference and to talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

This latter issue was the subject of nearly three hours of talks held by Shevardnadze here Wednesday with Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens. The two sides agreed to regularize and expand their dialogue through a series of working committee meetings but clearly remained far apart on the question of Middle East peace.

Shevardnadze also met separately with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who told reporters on Thursday that he supports the new Soviet-Israeli dialogue because it will give him a chance to engage in “indirect negotiations” with Israel through the Soviet Union.

The peace process, Arafat said, “is moving slowly, but it is moving. We know it won’t be a jet plane. Maybe something with propellers. But it will move,” he added.

Shevardnadze, whose current tour marks Moscow’s first major foray into Middle East diplomacy in more than a decade, said he had not come to the region with a specific peace plan so much as “the desire to devise such a plan.”

However, in the most-detailed public presentation of Moscow’s ideas on the peace process to date, he told the Egyptian party gathering that “new realities” demand “new thinking” and new approaches to solving the stalemated Middle East crisis.

He said that Soviet ideas envision a strong role for the U.N. Security Council, and in particular for the Soviet Union and the United States, in mediating and later guaranteeing a Middle East settlement through an international peace conference.

‘Nothing to Fear’

Acknowledging that Israel opposes an international conference but asserting it has “nothing to fear from it,” Shevardnadze said the aim of the conference would be to find a “balance of interests” between Israel’s right to exist behind secure borders and the Palestinian people’s “right to self-determination,” a phrase generally understood to imply the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Most analysts agreed that there was little in the Soviet minister’s proposals likely to appeal to Israel, which rejects the creation of an independent Palestinian state and opposes an international conference on the grounds that it would only generate pressure for more territorial concessions than Prime Yitzhak Shamir’s government is willing to make.

However, Shevardnadze argued that, by denying “freedom of choice to the Palestinian people,” Israel is “not strengthening but rather undermining both its security as a state and the legitimacy of its own self-determination.”

Only by recognizing Palestinian rights and by negotiating with the PLO, he insisted, can Israel attain the security it seeks and put an end to the intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip now in its 15th month.

Under the Soviet plan, the five permanent members of the Security Council would hold preliminary consultations, both between themselves and with Israel and the Arab states, with the aim of reaching an “understanding acceptable to all the parties about the parameters of an international conference,” Shevardnadze said.

To facilitate this process, the Soviet minister proposed the appointment, under Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, of a special U.N. representative for the Middle East, who would coordinate the consultations and work to complete the preparations within a deadline of six to nine months.

While Shevardnadze made it clear that the Soviet Union favors a conference that would give its Security Council sponsors broad authority to help settle disputes between the participants, he said that this and most other questions could be left for the conference itself to decide.

What is important, he said, is that the international conference be held because it is “our view that the conference would indeed give a chance for a historic compromise between the Arabs and the Israelis.”

Although claiming a role for the Soviet Union in the peace process, Shevardnadze dismissed suggestions that his initiative was meant to compete with the United States, whose diplomacy has dominated the peace process for the past decade.

“In these matters, the Soviet Union is in favor of eliminating any rivalries. . . . The policy of pushing each other out of the region has to be abandoned in favor of constructive cooperation,” Shevardnadze said.