PLO Seeks Clarification of Baker’s Peace Plan : Mideast: Blueprint for talks with Israelis is neither accepted nor rejected.

The Palestine Liberation Organization, struggling to maintain its role in negotiating the future of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories, declined on Friday to accept or reject a U.S. peace plan and instead submitted a request for clarification of the plan.

Following a meeting of the PLO leadership late Thursday in Tunis, a PLO envoy arrived here Friday with a list of questions about a plan drawn up by Secretary of State James A. Baker III for direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

The questions, sources said, reflect the same demands the PLO leadership expressed last month in Baghdad, Iraq, when the leaders insisted that it be left to the PLO to appoint any Palestinian delegation. The PLO also insisted on an open agenda for the talks, an agenda not limited to the question of elections in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The clarification request signaled the PLO’s continuing differences over the framework for the talks with Israel, which endorsed the Baker plan last week based on “assumptions” that no representative of the PLO would take part in the talks and that they would be limited to details of elections in the occupied territories.

Baker has said he does not intend to modify his five-point plan to accommodate the Israeli assumptions or provide secret guarantees to either party. But U.S. officials have not said how they will resolve the fundamental differences that remain over the scope of the talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is scheduled to meet with President Bush on Wednesday in Washington, and their discussion is expected to include the proposed talks. A PLO envoy arrived Friday morning with a copy of the clarification request. Egypt, which is serving as intermediary in the dialogue, was to transmit the request to the United States.

Khaled Hassan, a senior political adviser to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and a leader of his moderate Fatah wing, refused in an interview Friday to enumerate the PLO’s concerns about the Baker plan. He said the PLO leadership is “seeking additional clarification” based on points raised by the PLO’s Central Council in Baghdad.

The 80-member council, which acts as a link between the Palestinians’ parliament-in-exile and the ruling executive committee, was critical of the Baker plan and emphasized that in any peace talks the PLO must choose the Palestinian delegation and that the agenda must be open to all topics. Thursday night’s meeting in Tunis included a broad spectrum of the PLO leadership, including the executive committee, the leaders of guerrilla groups and officials of the parliament-in-exile.

Hassan did not say that the PLO, with its new questions, was closing the door to further discussion of the Baker plan.

“We are not making propaganda,” he said. “We are sincere in trying to make peace.”

At a meeting with reporters in Tunis, PLO spokesman Bassam abu Sharif said that the organization had adopted “a positive position; it means discussions will continue.”

Although PLO officials refused to publicly discuss details of the questions they raised in their latest communique, the Egyptian-owned Middle East News Agency, quoting Palestinian sources in Cairo, said they also included questions about whether the dialogue would lead to the convening of an international peace conference and whether the United States would guarantee that Israel would endorse the concept of trading land for peace.