Mayor’s Truce With Gates Seen as Effort to Cut Losses : Police: Bradley and his deputy initiated talks because the campaign to oust chief was in trouble, sources say.

Faced with criticism from business leaders and a decline in his public approval ratings, Mayor Tom Bradley is attempting to extricate himself from the volatile political struggle generated by the police beating of Rodney G. King.

The mayor’s desire to pull back from what had been shaping up as a titanic--and highly public--struggle with the City Council and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates prompted a summit meeting Tuesday afternoon between Bradley, Gates and council President John Ferraro.

At a news conference after the hourlong meeting, Ferraro was hailed by Gates for his role as a “peacemaker” in arranging the session, which produced a promise from the three to quiet the battle over whether Gates should be replaced.

But City Hall sources, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Bradley and his chief of staff, Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani, actually initiated the session after it became clear that Fabiani’s behind-the-scenes campaign to orchestrate Gate’s removal was in serious trouble.

While the mayor said at the news conference that he still believes Gates should be removed, aides said he has no plans to pursue the chief’s ouster, at least publicly. Bradley has denied that there was an underground attempt to oust Gates, although mayoral sources consistently have said otherwise. It is not known if the private anti-Gates campaign will continue, but some sources doubt it.

“Everyone in the mayor’s office is running for cover” said one source familiar with the Bradley Administration’s strategy.

Another source said the mayor has been left little choice but to alter his strategy regarding Gates, and added that Bradley’s willingness to allow Ferraro to don the mantle of meditator was telling: “That Bradley would have agreed to let Ferraro bring them together when he knew that Ferraro was a Gates loyalist was an incredible admission on his part.”

Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler denied that Tuesday’s joint statement with Gates signaled a retreat by the mayor: “The mayor’s position regarding the chief and the Police Commission remains firm and unchanged.”

Some sources close to the mayor suggested that one motive behind Bradley’s withdrawal was a pending two-week tour of Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. The trip begins Friday and before then, a source said, Bradley needed “to clear the air.”

“If everybody is still screaming, how does (Bradley) get out of town and not look like he’s walking away from a disaster?” asked one Bradley Administration official.

Tuesday’s meeting was only the latest in a series of developments that drastically altered what had seemed a smooth-running attempt to force Gates to resign as head of the 8,300-officer department.

First, Bradley last week publicly demanded Gates’ resignation. Two days later, Bradley’s appointees on the Police Commission placed the chief on a 60-day leave of absence. On Friday, the council surprised Bradley by ordering the city attorney to settle any lawsuit filed by Gates as a result of the Police Commission action. And a Superior Court judge on Monday temporarily reinstated the chief, but delayed a decision on the legal challenge to the chief’s disciplining.

Against that backdrop, some of Bradley’s strongest supporters in the business community began last week to publicly--and, sources said, in private conversations with the mayor--question the mayor’s political strategy regarding Gates.

For instance, Richard Riordan, a prominent Los Angeles attorney and longtime Bradley stalwart, said in an interview that the mayor has “got to back off. . . . I think he cannot go ahead (with a plan to seek the chief’s removal). I think he would be just (putting) himself deeper and deeper into a hole.”

Such comments sent Bradley a strong signal.

“It became dangerous,” said one source. “ . . . He was hearing from people who disagreed with the manner in which he was dividing the city.”

Also, a Times Poll late last week found that 6 out of 10 Los Angeles residents believed that in calling for Gates to resign, the mayor had sought to further his political aspirations. The poll also found that Bradley’s approval rating had slipped somewhat.

Ferraro, who had voted with a council majority to effectively override Gates’ removal, said the first suggestion of a conciliatory meeting between the mayor and the police chief came Monday after he bumped into Deputy Mayor Fabiani in a hallway.

Ferraro and Fabiani had “detailed conversations” about a possible summit and compromises, a knowledgeable source said.

Later Monday, Bradley phoned Ferraro at home.

“John, I hear you’d like to be in a meeting,” the mayor said, according to Ferraro. “Well, can you set one up?”

Ferraro said he called Gates at home and the mayor and both sides agreed to a 4 p.m. meeting the next day.

Bradley and Gates sat on separate tan couches in Ferraro’s office. The council president said he pulled up a chair in the middle with Gates on his left and Bradley on his right. No one else was present. Ferraro began with an appeal to both men.

“Let’s see what we can do to be positive about this,” he recalled saying. “As long as we keep attacking each other, the media loves that and that doesn’t solve any problems.”

Bradley suggested that Gates set a firm retirement date, perhaps as soon as his 65th birthday in August. The chief wanted Bradley to agree to drop the Police Commission’s action to put him on leave.

It quickly became clear that neither side would budge.

As the discussion wore on, Ferraro told the mayor that he should tell the city: “Daryl Gates is the chief of police. We got some problems in the Police Department. Nobody knows the department better. I’m for him 100% and I know he can correct them.”

Bradley never went along, Ferraro said.

Instead, the three officials settled on a few paragraphs scrawled on scratch paper by Ferraro, basically agreeing to tone down their divisive remarks. Then they appeared on television at 6 p.m.

Bradley was seen by some as the clear loser. The image of the mayor appearing at a news conference with Gates and Ferraro suggested a “total capitulation,” said one council member who has assumed a low profile in the Gates controversy but who voted with the majority to settle the lawsuit. The council member spoke on condition of anonymity.

Added Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky: “The mayor looked like someone who wanted to put this behind him.”

The announcement stunned community leaders who had been in contact with Bradley’s office and had applauded his public call for Gates to resign--and it made clear that removing himself from the fray might not be a simple task.

“It was shocking to me,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “I don’t understand why he did it. . . . It signals he is not feeling as certain about the course of this struggle as he did a couple of weeks ago. So, he is hedging his bets.”