Baker Won’t Offer Formal Mideast Peace Plan

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, apparently intent on keeping the Bush Administration out of the Middle East cross-fire, will decline to offer an “American plan” to break an impasse in the Israeli government and revive the peace process, a State Department official said Friday.

Israel’s Inner Cabinet rebuffed Baker’s appeal for approval of a 10-point Egyptian peace plan Friday, but an aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir hinted that Shamir’s right-wing Likud Bloc might accept a similar initiative if it came from Washington instead of Cairo.

“The Likud is looking for a formula so they can accept not the Egyptian proposal, but an American proposal. I don’t think there will be an American proposal because Baker doesn’t want to get that far out in front,” the U.S. official said.

“Shamir wants to be a little bit flexible on this but he needs some help,” the official added. “The question is how much help we can give him and stay within our own strictures.”

Traditionally, U.S. administrations have offered a variety of Middle East peace initiatives on the assumption that a proposal from Washington might be easier for all sides to accept than a plan emanating from one of the parties involved in the conflict.

When it works well, the procedure can enable leaders to take politically unpopular actions without having to accept sole responsibility. But the technique often results in both Israel and its Arab adversaries blaming Washington for anything that goes wrong.

Baker has been intentionally vague about his intentions, but the State Department official said it is clear that the secretary of state does not plan to play the traditional middleman role. Instead, the Administration urged Israel to reopen its own debate.

“What we are getting away from is some sort of formal presentation from the United States,” the official said. “I don’t think that is in the works at all. We want them to make some kind of decision.”

The Inner Cabinet, split evenly between the Likud and the centrist Labor Party in Israel’s coalition government, rejected by a straight party-line 6-to-6 vote Labor’s motion to accept Egypt’s 10-point proposal. Labor Party leaders, Baker and the Egyptian government all describe the plan as a way of reviving Shamir’s proposal to hold Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Shamir called the Egyptian plan “un-kosher” shortly after President Hosni Mubarak unveiled it. His rejection of the proposal was backed by all Likud members of the Inner Cabinet. But Yossi Ben-Aharon, a key Shamir aide, suggested that an American plan might fare better.

Earlier this week, Baker suggested that Egypt, Israel and the United States might join together to pick Palestinian delegates to begin preliminary talks with Israel. The idea was immediately accepted by Egypt, but Ben-Aharon said it was not considered by the Inner Cabinet because it had not been presented as a formal U.S. plan.

It was not clear why Baker, who described the tripartite plan to reporters following President Bush’s meeting with Mubarak on Monday, was unwilling to put the idea in writing.

Meanwhile, Baker backed away from his suggestion last week that the peace process would be sent “back to the drawing board” if the Israeli government did not do something to revive it.

“We’re certainly not back to the drawing board,” Boucher said. . . . We’re watching a discussion take place within Israel about this. The Israeli Cabinet has neither accepted nor rejected Egypt’s ideas.”