Egypt Supports U.S. Proposal for Peace Talks

Egypt gave general approval Wednesday to a U.S.-sponsored proposal for a Middle East peace conference involving Israel, the Arab countries and Palestinians, but both American and Egyptian officials warned that all sides remain far apart on some fundamental issues.

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak told Secretary of State James A. Baker III that he will cooperate in efforts to arrange the meeting, which Israel endorsed on Tuesday.

But Mubarak’s view of the conference was sharply different from Israel’s, highlighting the problems Baker faces as he tries to get the region’s warring parties to sit down at a single peace table.

The proposed conference, which is intended to launch direct talks between Israel and the Arabs, has become the centerpiece of the Bush Administration’s Middle East peace initiative--and has touched off a contest among the region’s statesmen to see who can be most effusive in praising it without giving any ground on issues of substance.

“We are open to discuss any way to find a peaceful solution,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid told reporters after Baker met with Mubarak for 90 minutes. “We can certainly work on that conference, how it can be an instrument for the attainment (of) peace. And I’m sure we are very sincere and very genuine in trying to achieve a comprehensive peace in this part of the world.

“We certainly appreciate the efforts that are deployed by the United States, by President Bush, by Secretary Baker in trying to reach a peaceful solution,” Meguid added.

But Baker, standing by the Egyptian’s side on the veranda of the presidential palace, seemed to take little comfort in his host’s gracious but noncommittal words. “(On) some things . . . there would appear to be some congruence of opinion between the United States and other countries,” was the most Baker would say. “The problems that we are addressing are extremely difficult, they are intractable, they are of very long standing.”

U.S. officials noted that only six hours before meeting with Baker, the Egyptian foreign minister had taken a much tougher line in a news conference with Arab and foreign journalists.

“There can be no peace as long as Israel is occupying Arab land,” Meguid said then.

And only a few hours before that, Egypt’s semiofficial newspaper Al Ahram, which usually mirrors government thinking, reported that Mubarak plans to pose a series of demands in any peace process--all of which conflicts with Israeli positions.

According to Al Ahram, Mubarak believes that any peace conference should lead to a larger international negotiation; Israel says it should lead to smaller, one-to-one talks. Mubarak wants Israel to give up Arab-populated territory in exchange for peace; Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has steadfastly rejected that kind of deal.

And Mubarak insists that Israel must stop expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip; Israel has refused to take that step, although the United States has pressed the issue for years.

The differences between Egypt and Israel, Al Ahram warned in an editorial, “are not over details or perception. They are over principles and basics. How can we expect Israel to trade land for peace when it is doing everything possible to change the demography of the land, and refuses all political rights to the Palestinians?”

Baker aides refused to say whether Mubarak had raised those points during his talk with the secretary of state.

Since Egypt is Washington’s closest ally in the Arab world, Mubarak’s view of how the negotiations should proceed carries considerable weight. His influence is magnified, as well, by his increasing leadership role among the Arab countries.

Since Egypt is the most moderate Arab state--and the only one that has already made a formal peace with Israel--Mubarak’s position also suggests that Baker will run into even worse trouble when he tries to sell the conference to Syria and Jordan later this week.

Syria, staking out a traditionally tough position, said Wednesday that it will accept a peace conference only if it is clear that the purpose is to secure an Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab lands.

The Egyptians, who receive more than $2 billion a year in U.S. aid, did give a little ground on one procedural issue: whether the conference must be held under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council--something Israel has long opposed because it fears that it would face the combined pressure of too many powerful countries.

“All the members (of the Security Council)--I think this would be an exaggeration,” Meguid said. “But if we can have . . . international participation, I think Egypt would be willing to go along.”

U.S. officials said the purpose of the proposed peace conference is to have the Arab countries begin direct talks with Israel--something Israel has long sought--and to have Israel, at the same time, begin direct talks with the Palestinians, who want an independent homeland in the West Bank and Gaza.

The meeting would ideally include representatives of Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians, and possibly other Arab countries, as well as the United States and the Soviet Union, the U.S. officials said.

But if the conference is ever to get under way, a senior U.S. official said, there will have to be changes of position on both sides--including Israel’s.

“Please resist the temptation for instant gratification here,” he told reporters aboard Baker’s airplane en route from Jerusalem to Cairo. “This is something that is going to take some time.”

The senior official said he still needs answers from Israel on one or more significant issues “in order to know that we have the potential here for possibly moving forward.”

Chief among those unanswered questions is whether Israel will accept the principle of withdrawing from Arab territories in exchange for peace, the cornerstone of more than 20 years of U.S. negotiating efforts.

In fact, Shamir has already answered that question--with a resounding “no.”

But the senior U.S. official suggested that he hopes to finesse that problem by allowing Israel to go into the talks contending that it has already given up enough land by returning the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1979.

Baker, who has won a reputation as a master negotiator and mediator, appears to believe that once he persuades the Middle East’s sworn enemies to sit down together, he can devise a process that will keep them talking.

Other issues that must be decided include the length of the conference, how quickly it would lead to bilateral talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors and who would participate--especially on behalf of the Palestinians.

Israel wants the conference to last a single day at most, then to dissolve into a series of individual negotiations. The Arabs, seeking to pool what diplomatic leverage they have, want to maintain the joint conference as long as possible.

“On some of the subjects there is understanding; on some of the subjects there is not yet understanding,” said Avi Pazner, a spokesman for Shamir, after Baker met with the Israeli prime minister for two hours Wednesday.

Israeli officials delighted in declaring that they had reached substantial agreement with the United States on the issue of the conference--and in saying that the onus was now on the Arabs to accept the proposal.

“We have a good feeling as a result of these talks, that a lot of understanding was reached between us and the United States,” Pazner said.

In effect, Israel was enthusiastically endorsing those parts of the American initiative that it liked and ignoring the parts it didn’t.

On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, a longtime proponent of the conference idea, buoyantly declared that the United States and Israel had reached full agreement on the issue.

That was easy for him to say, the senior U.S. official jibed with a wry smile. “He doesn’t have to bring any Arabs along.”