Israel-Soviet Talks: Chasm Remains : Arens Mentions No Point of Agreement With Shevardnadze

Foreign Minister Moshe Arens said Saturday that in talks with his Soviet counterpart last week, he unsuccessfully urged Moscow to drop its proposal for an international conference on Middle East peace. He also urged the Soviets to stop using the lure of fully restored diplomatic relations to try to get Israel to join such talks.

Interviewed on government radio, Arens gave a vivid account of his conversation Wednesday in Cairo with the Kremlin’s Eduard A. Shevardnadze. Their meeting was described as friendly after it took place, but Arens on Saturday mentioned no point of agreement between them on the pivotal issue of Middle East peace.

Jerusalem and Moscow have not had full diplomatic ties since the 1967 Six-Day War. Shevardnadze said in Cairo that such ties can be established, once Israel agrees to take part in an international peace conference. He also pressed the Kremlin’s position that the Palestine Liberation Organization be a full participant in such a conference. Israel’s present government firmly rejects any contact with the PLO.

Position ‘Really Not New’

“I think the Soviet position on an international conference . . . of involving the PLO in the political process is really not new,” Arens told an interviewer. “So if . . . you are suggesting that I was not able to convince him that they should depart from that position, I think that is correct.

“I don’t think they are serving the peace process at all when they are holding out an alternative that is really not a good alternative.”

While distressed at Soviet positions, Arens expressed satisfaction with news that the Bush Administration plans to move cautiously before making any new moves in the Middle East. “We certainly agree with that,” Arens said.

The United States, Israel’s chief ally, is one of the few countries involved in the Middle East that has refrained from trying to maneuver Israel into an international conference. Washington is, however, holding its own talks with the PLO.

Israel Under Pressure

Israel has been under pressure to come up with new peace ideas in the wake of recent, effective diplomatic moves by the PLO, which has stressed that it is ready to live alongside Israel in a new Palestinian state and wants to discuss the matter at a conference sponsored by the United Nations.

Both Arens and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir returned to Israel over the weekend from diplomatic trips abroad. While they were away, PLO leader Yasser Arafat sent a message to the Israeli public, through a press conference held in Cairo, saying that he is ready to talk peace directly.

Shamir, who came back from a meeting with French President Francois Mitterrand in Paris, reacted dismissively: “What he (Arafat) says now to Israelis is not sincere, is not what he thinks, is not what he plans to do. It’s all pure tactics.”

France Stands Firm

Shamir tried to talk Mitterrand out of France’s support for the PLO, but without success, according to sources in his office.

For his part, Arens described two exchanges with Shevardnadze during their get-together. In one, the Soviet diplomat asked Arens why Israel opposes an international conference, which would bring together representatives of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Arab countries, Israel and the PLO.

Arens recalled his response: “I said to him why is it you oppose direct negotiations (with neighboring Arab countries), which is the obvious way of arriving at a peace settlement?”

In another exchange, Arens suggested that the Soviet Union was letting Arabs dictate its Middle East policy. When Shevardnadze answered that no one dictates to the Soviet Union, Arens replied, “We’re a much smaller country than the Soviet Union, but no one dictates to us, either.”

The Jordan Factor

Arens repeated his assertion that Jordan should represent Palestinians at any kind of peace conference. Jordan’s King Hussein, however, pulled out of any potential involvement last year when he gave up his country’s claim to the West Bank and to any role in the Gaza Strip, both areas occupied by Israel.

These occupied territories have been in revolt for more than 14 months, and leaders of the uprising insist that the PLO is their diplomatic representative. Israel rejects the PLO because of its long role in terrorism and demands for an independent state.

In the West Bank on Saturday, soldiers searched the winding alleys of the casbah in Nablus for the killers of a reserve soldier who died Friday after someone dropped a concrete block on his head from a building.

Lured Into Ambush

Government radio reported that the dead soldier was lured into an ambush by rock-throwing children who fled as they were being pursued by troops. Stones rained down on the soldiers when they reached a narrow strip of the alley, the report added. Nablus was placed under curfew Saturday, and its 90,000 citizens were ordered confined to their homes.

The casbah has been the most militantly anti-Israeli neighborhood in Nablus, the West Bank’s largest and most rebellious city. Friday’s victim was the sixth Israeli soldier to be killed since the uprising began in December, 1987. More than 370 Arabs have died.

Israeli military officials spoke defiantly of the need to penetrate the casbah despite the violence. “To control every part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, we have to be present everywhere and cannot allow a vacuum, where independent organizations can be developed,” Gen. Dan Shomron, the army chief of staff, said.

In reaction to the soldier’s death, one right-wing politician said that the army should have reacted by blowing up 10 houses in the casbah, rounding up Arab youths and expelling them to Lebanon. Another said the heavily populated neighborhood should be emptied of its residents, who should then be scattered among towns and villages elsewhere.