Shamir Rejects Baker’s View of Israel’s Future

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir today bluntly rebuffed a call by Secretary of State James A. Baker III to renounce dreams of a Greater Israel and halt Jewish settlements in occupied areas.

“I think it’s useless, it was useless,” Shamir said in response to Baker’s speech Monday.

Baker, addressing the foremost pro-Israel U.S. lobby, urged Israel to give up “the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel” and forswear annexation of the occupied territories, torn by a Palestinian uprising.

The Israeli leader told a London news conference that he welcomed what he understood to be Baker’s “full support” for his own plan for elections in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But he added: “We cannot agree to what he said about some positions of Israel in the future, or even issues not related directly to the peace initiative--for instance, what he said about a Greater Israel or the settlement problem and so on.

Under Pressure

“I don’t think these issues on which we differ are anything to do with our proposed peace initiative.”

Shamir, under pressure at home and abroad over his handling of the 17-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, spoke after he sought Britain’s backing for the election plan in talks with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe.

Shamir is proposing that the 1.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip elect negotiators to hold talks with Israel on interim self-rule and a long-term peace settlement.

He said Thatcher had accepted the principles of his plan.

But a spokesman for Thatcher said that London saw the proposals as not going far enough.

Peace Conference Backed

A Foreign Office spokesman said Britain still believes that Israel should give up land in return for peace and it backs the idea, rejected by Israel, of a Middle East peace conference.

“We have welcomed the proposals but we have said it is important certain aspects should be clarified and fleshed out,” the spokesman said.

Britain recently upgraded its relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization but Shamir at his news conference rejected the idea of direct talks with the PLO.