EC Proposes Peacekeeping U.N. Force : Diplomacy: European ministers also call for international conference on Arab-Israeli problem. They ask Perez de Cuellar to deliver plan to Iraq.

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar headed Friday for his potentially fateful encounter with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after receiving a European peace proposal that included the stationing of a U.N. peacekeeping force in the Persian Gulf region and the convening of an international conference to address the divisive Arab-Israeli problem.

Perez de Cuellar, who will meet with Hussein today, three days before a U.N. resolution authorizes a U.S.-led multinational force to drive Iraqi troops out of neighboring Kuwait, said as he left Geneva for the Middle East: “I am not taking any specific proposal. I am going to listen and to be listened to.”

But foreign ministers of the 12 European Community nations, after meeting with Perez de Cuellar, said they expected him to put their plan before Hussein, at least in general terms.

“He is the world’s last messenger of peace,” said Jacques Poos, foreign minister of Luxembourg, which holds the European Community’s rotating presidency.

Perez de Cuellar began the day in Paris, where he met for 35 minutes with French President Francois Mitterrand, who has close ties with many Arab leaders and has been pursuing his own efforts to settle the gulf crisis.

“I don’t dare say I’m optimistic,” Perez de Cuellar said in Paris about his forthcoming meeting with Hussein, “but even so, I hold out hope.”

Later in the day, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he met with King Hussein and spent the night before his scheduled departure for Baghdad. Moments after landing in the Jordanian capital, the secretary general stressed his intention to discuss the Palestinian cause with the Iraqi leader.

“You’re preaching to a convert, my dear friend,” Perez de Cuellar told a Jordanian reporter who demanded during an airport press conference that the Palestinian issue be linked to the crisis talks, as Saddam Hussein has insisted and many Arab leaders have echoed.

Speaking on a podium before a large oil painting of Jerusalem and its Muslim mosques, Perez de Cuellar added:

“That is one of the problems which definitely I’m going to discuss (in Baghdad).”

The secretary general continued his upbeat tone throughout his short meeting with the press. When asked directly whether he will link the Palestinian issue with an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, he indicated that he expected “to raise all points with him (Saddam Hussein),” saying, “I am sure that my discussions with the president will be extremely useful.”

When asked what he will do next if his mission fails, Perez de Cuellar sighed and said, “Well, I forgot my crystal ball.”

In Geneva, the European Community foreign ministers, who had been rebuffed twice within a week in their effort to present their peace plan directly to Iraqi leaders, asked the U.N. secretary general to deliver their message.

Portuguese Foreign Minister Joao de Deus Pinheiro said the European plan, though not presented to Perez de Cuellar quite so precisely, boiled down to five points:

Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait beginning by the U.N. deadline Tuesday.

A guarantee by the forces arrayed against Iraq that it would not be attacked.

An agreement that the anti-Iraq forces would leave the gulf.

Deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force to monitor Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.

An international conference to address the full range of Mideast conflicts, including the Arab-Israeli problem.

“If Saddam Hussein does not accept this package,” Pinheiro said, “that will say that he only wants war.”

It is the last of the Europeans’ five points that is most controversial. Iraq has demanded such a conference, but the United States has insisted that Iraq should not be rewarded for its Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

European officials insisted they were not linking the international conference to Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.

“The (European) Community as a whole has been committed since 1981 to seeking a long-term solution to the (Mideast’s) problems,” Luxembourg’s Poos said. “There is no linkage, but there are problems to be faced. And when there are problems to be faced, why not be specific?”

German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said: “We want to convey to Saddam Hussein our willingness to take the totality of all the problems involved in the Middle East into account.”

British Foreign Office minister Douglas Hogg said Israel would have to participate in any comprehensive effort to solve the Mideast’s problems. Israel has long refused to sit down with many of its neighbors and with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Some ministers, including Pinheiro, said the conference could begin this year if the gulf crisis could be resolved quickly. Hogg said he was not so sure the conference could be convened that soon.

The international conference, initially part of a seven-point French package for settling the gulf crisis peacefully, had been endorsed by the European Community foreign ministers Jan. 4.

The proposal for a U.N. peacekeeping force to monitor Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, by contrast, was an initiative of Perez de Cuellar, who said the force could be deployed only after Iraq and the multinational opposition troops pulled back.

“Once the withdrawal is agreed upon, I think I will propose the participation of the U.N. force,” he said.

Genscher said the U.N. force “could be an Arab force or otherwise composed.”

The European foreign ministers emphasized that Iraq must physically begin pulling its troops out of Kuwait by Tuesday. A mere promise to do so, they insisted, would not be enough.

Times staff writers Nick B. Williams Jr. and Mark Fineman in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this article.

DIPLOMACY, DEBATE AND WARNINGS Geneva U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, en route to Baghdad for peace talks, met with foreign ministers of the European Community. He won their support for a U.N. peacekeeping role in the gulf region if Iraq pulls out from Kuwait. After leaving Geneva, he arrived in Amman, Jordan, on the way to Baghdad.

Tel Aviv The U.S. Embassy urged tens of thousands of Americans to leave Israel, which Saddam Hussein has threatened to attack if war breaks out.

Baghdad Iraqi President Saddam Hussein reiterated that he will not pull out of Kuwait without a settlement of the Palestinian problem--a linkage of the two issues that Washington has repeatedly rejected.

Taif, Saudi Arabia Secretary of State James A. Baker III told U.S. Air Force pilots that “you will not have to wait much longer” to know if the United States will go to war.

Washington Senate debate on the Persian Gulf was interrupted when about a dozen young people shouted anti-war slogans and were forcibly removed by Capitol police.