Demands on Proposals Flexible, Shamir Says

In the uneasy days before his meeting with President Bush, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir says he is willing to consider Middle East peace proposals from Washington that fall short of Israel’s demands--but not to give in to talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Last Sunday, Israel made several key demands of the United States as a condition for acceptance of a five-point peace plan from Secretary of State James A. Baker III. The plan is designed to get Israeli-Palestinian talks under way.

“I don’t know what will be the proposals (from Baker),” Shamir said in an interview. “Maybe he will accept all our proposals. And if there will be some other proposals of the secretary, I think it will have to be considered by our Cabinet.”

Shamir declined to specify which conditions he might be willing to give up--his government also wants to narrow the scope of the talks to details for holding Palestinian elections--but the combative prime minister expressed confidence that Washington “will not bring the PLO to the negotiating table against our will.”

This week’s Bush-Shamir talks--they will meet Wednesday at the White House--have been the subject of strained diplomatic give-and-take. Bush withheld the invitation on the grounds that he needed assurances bilateral talks would be positive. In Israel, the delay was viewed as implied criticism of Shamir’s unwillingness to accept Baker’s peace plan without conditions and a foretaste of a rough ride in Washington.

Shamir himself declined to discuss the handling of the invitation. “I’m not ready to comment,” he said tersely. The United States is itself negotiating with the PLO, and those talks have become the main sore point between Jerusalem and Washington. Shamir asserted that the Washington-PLO talks make it impossible for Israel to find independent peace partners.

“It doesn’t help,” Shamir said. “I think that this dialogue strengthens the PLO. It discourages people who have other views to be more outspoken to do something for peace.”

Shamir bases his opposition to talks with the PLO on its demand for an independent state. “It’s not a matter of a capricious mind,” he said. “The reason is very simple. . . . If we would agree to talk to the PLO, it will express our readiness to negotiate about a Palestinian state.”

Israel and the United States also disagree on the framework for a final peace solution, Shamir added. Washington believes that Israel should give up at least some of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Shamir hopes the subject will not come up in Washington. “I think these differences are not relevant now because the advantage of the peace process is to give the parties the possibility to negotiate in a gradual way about advancing toward peace (while) having different views, different positions about the ultimate goal,” he said.

In a rare admission, Shamir said he does not think that the Israeli army can fully repress the Arab uprising in the occupied lands.

“We have some difficulties, of course, in handling this problem,” Shamir said. “And the main difficulty of ours is . . . we are not ready, for moral reasons, to use all the necessary force to put an end to these violent manifestations.”