Baker to See Israel, Egypt Officials, Seek Palestinian Elections

Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Tuesday that he will meet next week with the foreign ministers of Egypt and Israel in an effort to revive plans for Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Plunging into a raging political debate in Israel, Baker praised Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 10-point Middle East peace proposal. He told a news conference that the Egyptian plan is compatible with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s proposal in which residents of the West Bank and Gaza would elect Palestinians to negotiate peace with Israel. Shamir and his rightist Likud Party oppose Mubarak’s initiative, although the plan is supported by Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other members of the centrist Labor Party.

“We see Egypt’s 10 points not as an alternative to the Israeli government’s proposal,” Baker said. “On the contrary, we think they represent Egypt’s acceptance of the Israeli proposal and . . . Egypt’s views on how to get to elections and make it work, how to get to a dialogue.

Searching for Dialogue

“We strongly support the government of Israel’s elections initiative,” he said. “We would like to . . . find a way to bring about a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, because we don’t think there will ever be peace in the Middle East except through direct negotiations.”

Baker said he plans to meet next week in New York with Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens and Egyptian Foreign Minister Esmet Abdel Meguid “to further discuss ways in which we might implement the Israeli election proposal.”

If Baker presses his support for the Egyptian plan at the proposed meeting, it would pit him and Meguid against Arens.

Arens, a member of Likud and a close ally of Shamir, considers the Egyptian plan unacceptable because it would permit Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote in the proposed election. Israel considers the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, which were controlled by Jordan before the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, to be part of Israel, while Egypt considers them part of the West Bank. The official U.S. position is that the status of East Jerusalem must be determined by negotiations.

Likud also objects to the element in Mubarak’s plan maintaining that a settlement must be based on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in exchange for peace. Likud rejects the land-for-peace formula, although Labor supports it. The United States has long advocated the exchange of occupied territory for peace.

Mubarak is trying to arrange a meeting, probably in Cairo, between Israeli government officials and a Palestinian delegation selected by Egypt with the tacit approval of the Palestine Liberation Organization to begin discussing ways to conduct Palestinian elections. So far, neither Israel nor the PLO has accepted the Egyptian approach.