Shamir Rejects Role for U.N., Format for Mideast Talks : Diplomacy: His answer to President Bush’s letter dims hope for yet another peace proposal.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has formally repeated his opposition to any role for representatives from the United Nations in proposed talks between Israel and Arab governments along with Palestinian negotiators.

In a letter to President Bush made public here Friday, Shamir also rejected a plan in which the wide regional talks format--including delegates from the United States, the Soviet Union and the European Community--would possibly reconvene from time to time rather than meet only once in an inaugural gathering.

Thus, with a pair of “nays” to Bush Administration compromises designed to jump-start Middle East peace talks, Shamir is poised to help kill off--for the second year in a row--a peace initiative that largely originated within his own government.

Bush is still awaiting responses to his appeals from some Arab governments, notably Syria, which is considered a key participant. But with Shamir’s response, the dim prospects for historic talks have faded further into a procedural fog.

In June, 1990, Shamir wrote a similar “Dear George” letter that put an end to plans for Palestinian elections designed to create a negotiating team for peace talks with Israel. The outline of that plan, like this one, was composed within Shamir’s Cabinet. In both cases, efforts by Secretary of State James A. Baker III to give concrete form to the proposals withered.

Although the current talks proposal has come to bear a made-in-Washington stamp, it came about at the initiative of diplomats in Israel’s Foreign Ministry. They proposed the idea of a regional conference as means of promoting Arab-Israeli talks in the wake of the Persian Gulf War and the defeat of Iraq, a major adversary of Israel.

The ministry’s enthusiasm infected Foreign Minister David Levy, who on several occasions gave optimistic appraisals of the chances for agreement. During a visit this week to Europe, Levy predicted that talks would open within two or three weeks.

Officials in Shamir’s office said, in so many words, that they didn’t know what the foreign minister was talking about, and Levy backed down.

Shamir’s objection to a role for the United Nations reflects Israel’s deep-seated suspicion of the world organization. Resolutions in both the General Assembly and Security Council are generously sprinkled with condemnations of Israel, including one that equates Zionism with racism and is viewed here as an expression of everlasting hostility to the Jewish state.

Bush’s assurance that the United Nations would play only an observer’s role did nothing to reduce the suspicion that, once in the door, the international group’s influence would weigh heavily on the side of the Arabs.

“If the United Nations is in, nothing good can come out,” government spokesman Yossi Olmert said flatly.

The proposal that the opening meeting reconvene also set off alarms with Shamir. He felt that in the case of a deadlock, the sponsors would act as a court of appeal on behalf of the Arabs. “The one-on-one talks would not be meaningful if the Arabs could run to the sponsors with their complaints,” Olmert declared.

Behind the resistance to the two compromises is fear that, in a pinch, Israel will be forced to give up occupied land in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, all of which it won in the 1967 Six-Day War. Washington, Moscow and European governments all subscribe to some version of a land-for-peace formula; the United Nations is on record calling for Israel to give up the territories.

Instead, Shamir hopes that in one-on-one talks, he will be able to work out a separate peace with each country and maintain control over the land. His government argues that by returning captured territory to Egypt under the 1979 Camp David peace accords, Israel already complied with U.N. requirements to give back land; it is now up to the Arabs to deliver peace, the Israelis say.

Otherwise, Shamir wrote Bush: “Such negotiations wouldn’t achieve peace but rather only (grant) legitimacy to Arab demands.”

Defense Minister Moshe Arens said Friday that in his response, Shamir agreed to many of the U.S. proposals but not to a U.N. role in negotiations.

“In fact, we gave positive answers to most of the proposals brought to us,” Arens told Israel Television. “But the point we must stop at is the point where this one-time event turns into an international conference. An international conference is not direct negotiations, and it will not bring peace to our region.”

At the White House, officials insisted that Shamir’s response to Bush’s letter was not a flat rejection.

“We continue to pursue the matter,” spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said. “We have heard back from Israel and Jordan, and we continue to discuss the peace process with them. They have some other ideas. We have ideas. We continue to talk.

“We have a situation where positions change, and they’re fluid,” he added. “But one thing we’ve learned in dealing with the Mideast peace process is not to respond on a daily basis or to take any statement as being the final word. Everything is always subject to discussion.”

As they have done since Baker’s trips to the Middle East began, White House officials refused to be specific about what proposals the secretary has made in his talks. But they insisted that unspecified “progress” has been made.

Separately, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington predicted that major movements in the peace process would come next month. The Administration is trying to allow time for Middle East leaders to strike the appropriate postures for domestic purposes before agreeing to a meeting, the ambassador, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, suggested in an interview with reporters and editors of the Washington Times.

One possibility, Bandar said, referring to an often-mentioned rumor in Washington, would be for Bush to publicly set a date for a Middle East peace conference and invite all parties to it, effectively daring Arab states and Israel not to show up. Under those circumstances, virtually all nations would attend a conference, he predicted.

The Palestinian election proposal that died last June originated with Yitzhak Rabin, Shamir’s defense minister until a coalition government fell apart earlier in 1990. Shamir resisted proposals to include in preliminary talks Palestinians from Jerusalem or in exile.

While the election plan and now the regional conference proposal were being ground down, Shamir has been energetic in altering the landscape of the occupied territory. Baker, during his four visits to Israel, was greeted with new settlements and land confiscations designed to make compromise in the West Bank and Gaza Strip impractical; most recently, a new housing development was announced for Gaza, home to more than 600,000 Palestinians and 3,000 Israeli settlers.

Regionally, events on Israel’s northern border appear to foreshadow the next Middle East war. Syria has gained unprecedented influence over Lebanon. A pro-Syrian government is in power, Syrian troops control large parts of the country and anti-Israeli militias are being permitted to gather in the south.

Syria, once a weapons client of the Soviet Union, is arming itself with money from Saudi Arabia.

Israel has beefed up its own client militia in southern Lebanon, in a cross-border buffer zone it controls, and has carried out 13 air raids on Palestinian and Lebanese guerrilla camps this year.

Times staff writer David Lauter in Washington contributed to this report.