Shamir Scuttled Plan for Peace Talks, U.S. Says

In a stinging rebuke to Israel’s caretaker prime minister, the State Department said Monday that Yitzhak Shamir torpedoed a U.S. initiative that was “on the verge” of producing unprecedented direct peace talks between Israel and a representative delegation of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Shamir’s continuing rejection of the American plan “will probably mean losing an important opportunity to move the peace process forward,” the department’s statement said.

The statement, read by department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler, injected the Bush Administration directly into Israel’s continuing political crisis by strongly implying that the country will have no chance for peace as long as the 74-year-old prime minister remains in power.

Shamir is in the early days of a 21-day mandate to form a new government to replace the national unity coalition he headed until March 16. At that time, the coalition fell after Shamir rebuffed the peace initiative put forward by Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Shamir’s archrival, Labor Party leader Shimon Peres, who supports the Baker plan, failed last week in an attempt to form a government of his own.

The Bush Administration, and the Reagan Administration before it, have made no secret of their preference for Peres. However, the U.S. government tried to soft-pedal its attitude in public because it wanted to avoid charges of meddling in Israeli politics.

But the department’s Monday statement, approved by Baker and other top officials, amounted to a direct, point-by-point reply to remarks by Shamir in an interview earlier in the day.

In the interview on Israel Radio, Shamir mocked Peres’ assertion that Labor pulled out of the national unity government because Shamir’s refusal to say “yes to Baker” had stalled the peace process.

“I must say there is something perhaps ridiculous in the very slogan ‘Yes to Baker,’ ” Shamir said. “What is this ‘Yes to Baker’? We are happy we cooperate with the U.S. government in the bold effort to reach some sort of agreement with the Arab world in the conflict between us and them.

“But if there is understanding and cooperation between us and the United States, no one can expect we will accept every proposal or idea of an American secretary of state, come what may,” Shamir said.

In its response, the State Department said, “Saying yes to Secretary Baker’s (proposal) meant saying yes to the government of Israel’s (own) plan, yes to Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and yes to peace. Continuing to say no will give us very little to work with. . . . “

Under the Baker plan, the foreign ministers of Israel, Egypt and the United States would meet in Cairo to select a Palestinian delegation to negotiate with Israel over conditions for West Bank and Gaza Strip elections. The Palestinians elected would negotiate a peace agreement.

The elections were originally proposed last May by Shamir, but West Bank and Gaza Palestinians refused to participate unless they were given a voice in determining the rules for the balloting. Baker’s plan was intended to get over that hurdle.

Tutwiler’s statement came much closer than Administration officials ever have before to claiming that Shamir balked at a time when the effort was nearing success.

“The government of Israel asked us to find a Palestinian partner from the (occupied) territories to help implement its May, 1989, initiative,” Tutwiler said. “We were on the verge of accomplishing that objective. Indeed, we felt we were close to producing Palestinians from the territories who were prepared to talk to Israel about the elections in the territories.” She added that the Baker plan “would have enabled us to achieve this.”

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, several thousand Israelis, including a group of army reserve officers on a hunger strike, staged a protest rally in front of the Parliament building to demand changes in the electoral system, the Associated Press reported.

Israel Army Radio said that more than half a million Israelis, an astonishingly large number in a nation of only about 5 million, had signed petitions demanding electoral reform.

The petitions were presented to Chaim Herzog, who holds the largely ceremonial post of president. Herzog called for electoral reform and criticized Israeli politicians for showing a “total contempt for the principles of democracy.”

Under the Israeli electoral system, the Knesset’s 120 members are elected on a nationwide ballot that assigns seats to a bewildering variety of political parties on the basis of their proportion of the vote. No party has ever won a majority, so all governments have been coalitions.

The present Knesset is so evenly balanced between Shamir’s Likud Party and Peres’ Labor Party that neither man has been able to cobble together the 61 votes needed to install a government.