Israel Seeks Tighter Rein on Palestinians at Peace Talks : Mideast: The government wants to control who can speak and what they can say at the proposed conference.

Israel is reaching for control not only of the makeup of the Palestinian delegation to proposed Middle East peace talks but also what it can say and who can say it. And no Palestinian flags, please.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had already demanded assurances from Washington that neither the Palestine Liberation Organization nor any Palestinian from Jerusalem would have a place at the table.

On Friday, Israeli officials listed new details of Israel’s conditions for joining the talks.

Foreign Minister David Levy told the pro-government Jerusalem Post that he is waiting for Secretary of State James A. Baker III to affirm that “there is a proposed delegation and we can see the list.”

A Foreign Ministry official told The Times that a list is needed to check against known PLO members.

A series of detailed demands were leaked by officials in Shamir’s office. The prime minister wants the subjects for negotiation to be spelled out in the official invitations sent to Israel and the other participants. This is a way of ensuring that Israel is not committing itself, simply by attending, to surrender occupied land in return for peace treaties.

In the 1967 Middle East War, Israel won the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. At the proposed conference, Syria reportedly would demand the return of the Golan Heights, and the Palestinians want the West Bank and Gaza to create an independent state. The Sinai was returned to Egypt under the terms of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.

As symbolic insurance against the Palestinian quest for an independent state being taken up, Israel is demanding that only the Jordanian foreign minister be allowed to speak for the Palestinians at the opening session.

Shamir maintains that the Palestinian state already exists--in Jordan--because the majority of Jordanians are of Palestinian origin and because he believes that all land west of the Jordan River belongs to Israel by historical right.

Under Baker’s plan for talks, the Palestinians would be part of Jordan’s negotiating team.

The Palestinian flag--the green, white, black and red banner of the Arab revolt against Ottoman Turkey--would be barred from the conference, Israel says.

“The name of the PLO is not supposed to be mentioned, either,” a senior Israeli official said.

The ban on Palestinians from Jerusalem is meant to affirm Israel’s stand that the city, with its annexed Arab neighborhoods, is not to be the subject of talks.

Despite all these nails on the road, Shamir repeated his welcome of Syria’s decision to meet face to face with Israeli officials and told a visiting Jewish-Canadian delegation, “We must start negotiations, and we want to start them now.”

Syria is considered a key to easing tensions in the Middle East. Its president, Hafez Assad, had long been a holdout in peace efforts. Shamir has said that Assad--unlike the Palestinians--can bring up anything he wants, including the issue of the Golan Heights. But, Shamir adds, Israel will not give in.

Disputes over Palestinian issues have held up endorsements of the peace talks from both Israel and the Palestinians. President Bush has urged each to confirm their attendance; leaders of four Arab nations--Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan--have already consented.

Last week, during his latest Middle East swing, Baker warned that Bush and his co-sponsor for the talks, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, might issue invitations even if everyone has not signed on.

Palestinians have bristled at the veto power claimed by the Israelis over a Palestinian delegation. They are especially disturbed over efforts by Baker to get them to drop their demand for a delegate from Jerusalem, either by delaying the delegate selection until later in the conference or by permitting someone from Jordan who once lived in Jerusalem to fill the place.

Faisal Husseini, a Jerusalem-based Palestinian leader who met with Baker during each of the shuttles to Jerusalem, told reporters in Sweden that a Palestinian from the city must be at the table.

Husseini was in France on Thursday trying to win support for the Palestinian position. On Friday, he pressed his case with the Swedes.

The precise position of the PLO is hard to figure. Despite the group’s arm’s-length treatment by Washington, the PLO is making the decision on whether to attend--not local affiliates such as Husseini. Top PLO leaders are meeting in Tunis this weekend to decide.

Palestinians here say Baker was unbending in his meeting last Sunday with Husseini and two other local leaders. Baker told them that the Jerusalem delegate issue will not be settled to their satisfaction and offered no guarantee that their claims to sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be taken up right away, if ever.

In addition, he said Israel will not be forced to stop its settlement program in the West Bank and Gaza Strip even when talks begin.

The Bush Administration frequently refers to settlements as obstacles to peace, but it has taken no firm steps to press Israel to stop building them. The Administration has refrained from putting the issue in terms of international law, even though the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids altering the population balance of an occupied territory.

The Israeli newspaper Davar reported that, since November, the Defense Ministry has been giving land in the West Bank free to settlers. In confirming the report, Defense Ministry spokesman Danny Naveh said: “It was nothing special. We were just treating the area like other parts of Israel.”

The giveaway was not public knowledge, but Naveh said that was an oversight and that the government has not tried to hide the program. He said he does not know how much land has been handed out.