Israel Ready to Attend Talks, Arens Says

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens said Sunday that Israel has “in principle” agreed to attend a Middle East peace conference and that announcement of the decision is “no more than a formality.”

After understandings reached with Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who visited Jerusalem last week, Israel has overcome its reservations about attending the peace talks that are to be sponsored jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union, Arens said in an interview on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

“Based on agreements that we reached during Secretary Baker’s visit here, in principle the answer is positive,” Arens said, adding that an official announcement of Israel’s decision is forthcoming.

At Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he was playing golf, President Bush said he has not yet received an official reply from the Israeli government but is encouraged by Arens’ statement.

“I heard that Arens was very upbeat, and we view that as positive, but there has been no official word from Mr. (Prime Minister Yitzhak) Shamir yet. . . ,” Bush told reporters. “It’s in their interests to go to this conference.”

Baker received Arab approval for his peace proposals earlier this month, and Israel has been under mounting U.S. pressure to accept the formula worked out by the secretary in time for President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to make an announcement about the conference at their Moscow summit meeting, which begins Tuesday.

For Israel, however, the chief stumbling block has been the issue of Palestinian representation, with Shamir refusing to attend the conference if it includes any Palestinians affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization or any Palestinians living either in exile or in mostly Arab East Jerusalem.

With Palestinians resisting this condition, it is not clear how an agreement can be worked out. However, Arens said Sunday: “We have reached agreement with the United States over the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation and agreed that it should not include anybody from the PLO, nor a resident of Jerusalem.”

He did not elaborate, and a State Department spokesman in Washington said that any U.S. comment about a breakthrough on the Palestinian question would have to come from Baker, who is in Mongolia.

The Israeli ban on exiles at the conference is intended to exclude anyone even indirectly affiliated with the PLO from taking part in the negotiations. The exclusion of Palestinians from Jerusalem is meant to preclude demands that Israel withdraw from the eastern half of the city, which it captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Under the Baker plan, any Palestinians who do take part in the negotiations would do so as part of a delegation from Jordan which, along with Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, has agreed to attend the conference.

Shamir’s refusal to attend if the delegation includes exiles or Jerusalem residents had appeared to be a possible deal-breaker, significantly complicating Baker’s efforts to find suitable Palestinian representation. “It effectively narrowed the field of possible Palestinian participation down to nearly nobody,” one Arab diplomat in Washington observed.

A Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman, Vitaly I. Churkin, said Sunday that arrangements for a peace conference will be the first item on the agenda when Baker arrives in Moscow today for pre-summit talks with his Soviet counterpart, Alexander A. Bessmertnykh.

“My guess would be that the first thing they would like to exchange views about would be the Middle East because we now seem to be at a crucial point,” Churkin said in an interview on CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday.”.

Quiet but intensive negotiations over Palestinian representation at a peace conference have been taking place not only between Baker and Shamir, but between the United States and Jordan and the Soviet Union and the PLO. The issue is extremely sensitive because Israel will not negotiate with any Palestinian who acknowledges an affiliation with the PLO, yet no Palestinian is likely to take part in the negotiations without at least the tacit approval of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The Soviets, cooperating “very closely and successfully” with Baker over the last several months, have been “working . . . with the Palestinians” to resolve the apparent dilemma over their participation, Churkin said.

Officially, Israel is still waiting for Jordan to relay through the United States a list of candidates who would form the Palestinian component of the Jordanian delegation. It was not clear from Arens’ remarks whether that list has now been received and approved by Israel. But Arens did seem to imply that a resolution of the issue is near.

“I think we are very close to a general agreement that will allow an initial meeting to take place and then break up into bilateral talks,” he said.

Arens added that, under the formula proposed by the United States, the peace conference would have a ceremonial opening, convening “for a day and a half or two” before breaking up into the “direct bilateral negotiations” that Israel has always favored.

Describing Syria’s decision to negotiate directly with Israel as a “very significant step forward,” Arens adopted a conciliatory tone when asked about Shamir’s often-stated refusal to consider giving up territory for peace.

“If everything was agreed to before negotiations, there would be no need for negotiations,” Arens said, refusing to be drawn out on the question of what concessions Israel might in the end be willing to make in return for peace.