Soviets Push Conference on Mideast

The Soviet Union today proposed an international conference to discuss the Persian Gulf crisis, the Arab-Israeli dispute and the Lebanese civil war.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir reiterated his opposition to discussing the Palestinian issue at an international conference, but he welcomed the idea of a conference on the Persian Gulf.

A spokesman for President Mikhail S. Gorbachev declined to say how hard he will press the issue when the Soviet leader meets with President Bush on Sunday in Helsinki, Finland.

“The Soviet president intends to discuss . . . ways of defusing the Persian Gulf crisis, and he believes that all efforts, including those of a mediator, are viewed positively in the Soviet Union,” presidential spokesman Vitaly N. Ignatenko told a news conference.

Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze proposed the conference earlier in the day during a speech in Vladivostok in the Soviet Far East. Shevardnadze said the summit in Helsinki “will mark a major milestone on the road toward resolving the crisis in the Persian Gulf.”

But he said that “after one more look at the situation, we still have come to the same conclusion”--that an international conference on all aspects of the Middle East is necessary. He stressed that in the meantime efforts to bring about a settlement of the Persian Gulf situation under U.N. auspices should continue.

Shevardnadze criticized previous Soviet arms sales to Iraq, which ended after the invasion, and said the Soviet Union might re-examine its relations with Israel. But he also linked solution of the Persian Gulf crisis to the Palestinian issue, as well as to the civil war in Lebanon.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at one point proposed that a pullout of his troops from Kuwait be contingent upon an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. The United States rejected the plan.

“At this point in time, there is a growing awareness . . . that a complex of problems involving the Arab-Israeli conflict, the fate of the Palestinians and the tragedy in Lebanon awaits its resolution in the Middle East,” Shevardnadze said in his speech.

“Presumably, Israel’s agreement to its (a conference’s) convocation could exert a positive influence on the overall situation in the Middle East and on efforts to defuse the crisis in the Persian Gulf,” he said.

“For its part, the Soviet Union . . . might take a fresh look at the issue of Soviet-Israeli relations,” Shevardnadze added.