Compromise on Israel Eludes U.N. Security Council : Diplomacy: The U.S. and the PLO are still at odds over a mission to investigate the killing of 19 Arabs. Talks continue behind the scenes.

Exhausted members of the U.N. Security Council, prodded by the council’s president, continued to work behind the scenes Thursday to draft compromise language agreeable to both the United States and the Palestine Liberation Organization on how to condemn Israel for the killing of 19 Palestinians.

The latest attempt to craft a resolution kept diplomats at the United Nations working until 4 a.m. Thursday before formal talks collapsed over the composition and precise mission of fact-finders to be sent to Jerusalem by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

At the last minute, the PLO, through nations acting on its behalf, demanded that the investigators make recommendations on how to protect Palestinians under Israeli occupation, as well as Islamic and Christian holy sites.

“That’s not a resolution we can support in there,” U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering told reporters as he left the pre-dawn Security Council deliberations Thursday.

The thorniness of the issue was written large on the fatigued faces of council members as Britain, in private and in public, pressed for a formal vote on a resolution.

“Condemnation delayed is certainly condemnation weakened,” British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd declared in London. “My concern is to get a resolution . . . as quickly as possible which will say what is necessary to say about the tragedy, the killings in Jerusalem, and get a U.N. mission there.”

The Palestinians were slain by Israeli police and security forces Monday after a crowd stoned Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall. About 140 Arabs were wounded, as were more than 20 Israelis.

Hurd said that disagreements over the precise nature of the U.N. mission to Jerusalem are blocking a Security Council resolution, and he indicated that the Britain, through British Ambassador David Hannay, the council’s president, is pressing hard for a compromise.

In negotiations, the PLO appeared to have moved away from its insistence that a three-member Security Council commission examine the situation in Jerusalem. But the PLO’s central council, meeting in Tunis, Tunisia, said Thursday in a communique that the Security Council is obligated to protect Palestinians in Jerusalem.

As far as the United States is concerned, a good resolution would have the 15-member Security Council say that it is “deeply concerned” by the acts of the Israeli security forces. At the same time, it would limit the mission’s task to submitting a report to the council by the end of October on the situation of civilians under Israeli occupation in Jerusalem.

The goal of the Bush Administration is to express its displeasure toward Israel and at the same keep strong the integrity of the Arab alliance against Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein.

When nations friendly to the PLO insisted early Thursday that the mandate of the U.N. secretary general’s mission to the area be broadened, the United States objected.

American delegates pointed out that under the Fourth Geneva Convention covering the welfare of civilians in military occupied areas, Israel is responsible for civilians in the occupied territories.

The American effort to win an acceptable compromise is complicated by the PLO’s increasingly close relationship with Iraq. The Baghdad government clearly would prefer to force the United States to veto a U.N. resolution on the issue, which would put intense pressure on the Arab members of the American-led coalition opposing Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait.

Although even a mild U.N. resolution condemning Israel would be a major victory for the Palestinians, the PLO may be unable to compromise because of Iraqi pressure to provoke a U.S. veto.

Goldman reported from the United Nations and Kempster from Washington.