Rush Toward Peace Talks Has Arab Leaders Scrambling

Whirlwind diplomacy behind the revived U.S. peace initiative for the Middle East has sent Arab leaders scrambling to cover their political bases while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir considers his response.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s four-day blitz through Israel and key Arab capitals, spurred by Syrian acceptance of his carefully crafted formula for talks, pinned down commitments at a blistering rate. Forty-eight hours after Baker flew off to Southeast Asia, the dust had yet to settle Wednesday.

The Palestinians have dispatched delegations to three Arab capitals to seek promises that their territorial and political demands will be pressed in any talks with the Israelis. In Damascus, Cairo and Amman, they reportedly were expressing suspicions that their cause might be sold out. And statements from places such as Tunis, where the Palestine Liberation Organization is headquartered, sounded even more negative.

The response from Syrian President Hafez Assad’s regime was an idolatrous press campaign hailing the 60-year-old leader as a political genius for accepting the Baker proposals 10 days ago. Assad’s decision opened the door to the possibility of the first face-to-face talks between the Israelis and their Arab enemies since Israeli-Egyptian peace contacts began in 1977.

Israel held all the cards immediately after the Persian Gulf War, declared Al Baath, the daily newspaper of Syria’s ruling party, but “Syria, by the wisdom of its leader . . . and his ability to adapt to change, blocked the enemy’s path and threw the ball back into his court.”

Speaking to Palestinian concerns that Syria and other Arab powers might cut separate deals, the government-owned paper Tishrin commented: “While Syria wants peace and is committed to work for a permanent, comprehensive settlement, it is equally committed to the restoration of all the occupied Arab lands and the achievement of the Palestinian people’s rights.”

It was clear by Wednesday that the issue of Palestinian representation in the proposed talks was the immediate sticking point, with Israeli officials and Palestinian leaders in East Jerusalem marking out the same differences that burst Baker’s last initiative in early 1990.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians sought to head off what one of their major press voices, the London-based Al Quds al Arabi, called an Arab “concession stampede,” and other Arabs sought to assure the Palestinians that their interests were being protected in the sudden rush toward talks.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Faris Bouez, for instance, met Baker in Cairo on Saturday and said the resurgent Beirut government favors the American formula. But on his return to the Lebanese capital, Bouez insisted--and said he had so informed Baker--that any conference take up not just U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for Israeli withdrawal from occupied lands, but also Resolution 425. That resolution demands an Israeli withdrawal from its self-proclaimed security strip in southern Lebanon.

Another complicating political issue is the proposal for the Arabs to abandon their longstanding economic boycott and trade blacklist of Israel in exchange for an Israeli pledge to freeze settlements in the occupied territories. The PLO insists on retaining the boycott, and the Shamir government refuses to stop the settlements. So, the proposed trade-off, pushed primarily by Egypt and the Gulf states, appears to be going nowhere.

In Jordan, King Hussein seemed agreeable to any avenue toward peace. He said his government is ready to talk with the Israelis and that he has been talking with Palestinians about forming a joint delegation, which might solve some of the representation issues.

But readiness at the top, in Jordan as elsewhere, does not necessarily reflect commitment in the ranks.

As the king was talking to the press, for instance, the Jordanian Parliament was putting the final touches on a statement that rejected the boycott proposal and bashed Washington for attempting “to impose surrender on us.”