Israel Bows to Pressure, OKs U.N. Envoy Visit : Diplomacy: Officials are willing to discuss the Arab conflict--but not the Temple Mount killings.

In an effort to head off further international reproach, Israel announced Monday that it will accept a visit by a United Nations envoy to discuss the Palestinian conflict, but only if the U.N. official steers clear of the issue of last month’s police shootings of Palestinian rioters, which is what the United Nations wants to investigate.

The Monday announcement appeared aimed at persuading the United Nations to drop a proposal by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to convene an international conference to discuss the condition of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

The Israeli counterproposal also attempts to ease strains with the Bush Administration over Israel’s refusal to permit a fuller U.N. probe into the Oct. 8 riot on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Police shot and killed 20 Palestinians who had hurled stones at nearby Jewish worshipers.

Administration officials have complained that the controversy over the Jerusalem incident detracts from Washington’s efforts to focus international energy on turning back Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman here said that the visit of a U.N. envoy would “be detached and have no connection” with the U.N. Security Council’s call for an investigation into the Jerusalem riot.

In an interview on Israel Army Radio, Foreign Minister David Levy said, “It is obvious that Israel rejected the Security Council resolution and rejects it today as well and will not receive any envoy on the basis of that decision.”

Levy made it clear that smoothing relations with the United States is a paramount goal. “We have returned to the basic understanding that is necessary in the relations between the two countries. I am pleased,” he said.

Israel has asked the United States to veto any further condemnations of Israel but has not received such a guarantee, Israeli newspapers said.

In New York, Thomas R. Pickering, the American ambassador to the United Nations, responded to the Israeli proposal with caution. “I’m not sure that that is necessarily going to be possible, but we want to take a careful look at this, and we’ll be in touch with people about it,” he said.

It is unclear whether Perez de Cuellar would accept Israeli conditions for receiving an envoy. “We do not accept conditions,” a U.N. spokeswoman in New York said.

Perez de Cuellar has been in Tokyo attending the enthronement of Japan’s Emperor Akihito and reportedly has discussed Israel’s offer with Vice President Dan Quayle and Israeli President Chaim Herzog, both of whom were in Tokyo for the ceremony.

Nasser Kidwa, the PLO’s permanent observer at the United Nations, dismissed Israel’s proposal as “kind of a gimmick.”

“It is a deliberate attempt to block the movement of the Security Council,” Kidwa said. “This is nothing. It’s ridiculous.”

He said that the PLO would continue to press, through nonaligned nations on the Security Council, the notion of sending a U.N. observer force to territories under Israeli occupation to ensure compliance with Security Council resolutions, and also would lobby for a meeting of the 164 nations that signed the Fourth Geneva Convention, which covers the protection of civilians in territories taken during a war.

Israel has said it would not accept a visit by a U.N. observer force.

Israeli officials expressed a preference that Jean Claude Aime, a top aide of Perez de Cuellar, make the visit. Aime came to Israel in June to investigate the shooting deaths of a score of Palestinians who took to the streets the previous month to protest the killing of seven Arab laborers by an Israeli gunman.

Nothing was ever heard of his report.

Last month, the Security Council authorized a three-member U.N. team to probe the unrest. Israel rejected the investigation on the grounds that the United Nations has no jurisdiction over events in Jerusalem, Arab districts of which were annexed following the 1967 Middle East War. A Foreign Ministry spokesman called the U.N. plan for an international conference a “disgraceful exploitation of a tragic incident (meant) to call into question Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.”

Most governments, including the United States, do not recognize the 1967 annexation.

Israel has carried out its own investigation of the Oct. 8 riot. According to the official report, police fire on the rioters, although “uncontrolled,” was justified because the Palestinians had first thrown stones at Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site.

On Monday, the long-awaited shift of high police positions took place. In what was billed as admission of responsibility, the Jerusalem police chief was promoted to a desk job and the head of the southern police district was given permission to retire sometime before his scheduled April retirement date.

Times staff writer John Goldman in New York contributed to this report.