U.S. Walks Delicate Line on Palestinians : United Nations: The Administration studies backing a call for peace talks on occupied areas.

In a piece of delicate diplomacy, the Bush Administration on Thursday studied whether to go along with a U.N. Security Council resolution calling “at an appropriate time” for an international peace conference to solve conflicts between Israel and Palestinians living in the occupied territories.

A revised draft of a resolution submitted by Colombia, Cuba, Malaysia and Yemen contains caveats before such a meeting would take place, and it was understood that U.S. diplomats were trying to soften the language even further.

The concept of a peace conference is not new and has been endorsed in general by U.S. diplomats for several years.

But welcoming a call for convening a meeting at some time in the future in a Security Council resolution would mark a shift in U.S. policy--a shift made more delicate by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s scheduled arrival in the United States today.

In the search for language acceptable to the Bush Administration, a Security Council meeting scheduled for Thursday was put off until today. Some diplomats indicated that negotiations may continue through the weekend.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stressed Thursday that the Administration at this time is not supporting a call for an international conference on the Middle East.

“We are not recommending that an international conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict be held, nor are we supporting a resolution in the Security Council that would seek to convene such a conference,” Baker said.

“This is certainly not an appropriate time for such a conference,” the secretary of state added.

But other diplomats noted that Baker was using very careful language and that the resolution before the council welcomes calls for convening “at an appropriate time” such a meeting--not in the midst of the Persian Gulf crisis.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said in Santiago, Chile, that the Administration is working with others at the Security Council “to work out language that fits our policy.” Washington has maintained that it would support such a meeting if it is “appropriately structured” and takes place at the “appropriate time.”

With pressure building for such a conference, Fitzwater said, “there’s a feeling that if there is a resolution--and there’s wide sentiment for one--we’d like to influence it as much as possible.”

Israel has long opposed such a session, and sources said Shamir is prepared to reiterate that opposition when he meets with Bush next week in Washington.

Diplomats of other nations familiar with U.S. thinking stressed that it is not the Bush Administration that put forward the conference proposal in the Security Council resolution in the first place.

These diplomats said U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, in an effort to reach acceptable consensus language, had discussed the draft with other council members. The draft also calls for convening a meeting of all 164 nations that signed the Fourth Geneva Convention and an ombudsman to monitor the plight of Palestinians in areas under Israel’s control. The Fourth Geneva Convention covers the status of civilians in territories occupied during a war.

Shamir’s arrival, diplomats said, is a complicating factor. On the one hand, the Bush Administration weighed the cost of displeasing Israel. On the other, it weighed the risk of angering Arab nations in the coalition aligned against Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations welcomed Baker’s statement.

“Any measure regarding Israel adopted at this time would give Saddam Hussein an important propaganda victory and invite the very linkage the U.S. has sought to avoid,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, the conference’s executive director.

Friends of Israel at the United Nations clearly were nervous.

They worried about whether the Administration is using the Persian Gulf crisis to make policy changes toward Israel. They said that Shamir will tell Bush that the United States needs Israel as its strong partner in the Mideast.