Baker’s Future May Be on Line in Middle East

Secretary of State James A. Baker III enjoys a well-deserved reputation as a formidable negotiator. This week, he’s putting that reputation on the line.

For seven months, Baker has been shuttling between Washington and the Middle East, trying to cajole Arab and Israeli leaders into peace talks to end their 43-year state of war.

Saturday night, Baker took off on his eighth journey this year in pursuit of the peace conference, with hopes of winning final agreement on it from the region’s two most important antagonists, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Syrian President Hafez Assad.

In the process, the peace conference has become more than just a diplomatic goal: It has turned into a make-or-break test of Baker’s strength as a secretary of state and even a factor in whether he could be a Republican candidate for President in 1996.

If Baker succeeds, he will be hailed as the greatest American negotiator since former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, and he will probably be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

If he fails, he is unlikely to suffer much blame. The recalcitrant Syrians and Israelis will probably share that distinction. But Baker knows all too well that if he cannot wrestle Assad and Shamir the final few steps to the peace table, he’ll be remembered forever as falling short--a painful prospect after seven months of effort.

“This whole thing could still blow up,” cautioned Margaret Tutwiler, Baker’s spokeswoman and closest aide. “If it doesn’t happen, will it be a disappointment? Sure. . . . But there isn’t a secretary of state yet who’s succeeded at this. He has already gotten credit for bringing them farther than ever before, and he deserves it.”

Added another Baker aide: “He’s working this issue harder than any issue I’ve ever seen. It’s clearly going to affect his reputation one way or the other. . . . He’s completely immersed in it.”

Baker mostly steered clear of the quicksand of Arab-Israeli negotiations during his first two years as secretary of state, convinced that the chances of success were slim.

But last year, as the United States built a coalition with Arab countries to oppose Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, President Bush promised Arab leaders that he would take another look at the Arab-Israeli issue. And once the war with Iraq was won, Bush quickly announced a major initiative, seeking to capitalize on the leverage that the United States enjoyed among both the Arabs and Israel.

As he sent Baker off on one of his first negotiating trips, Bush joked that the initiative would be called the Baker plan “until it began to work--and then we (will call) it the Bush plan.”

“He didn’t choose to get into this one--the President put him in it,” an aide to Baker confirmed. “But once he was in it, he went at it completely.”

A White House official agreed. “This is mostly Baker’s show,” he said. “It’s almost all being done from the seventh floor of the State Department,” the elegant, antique-filled office suite where the secretary of state works.

Since March, Baker has logged more than 100,000 miles of travel to and from the Middle East, countless telephone calls and cables, several angry confrontations with Shamir and six marathon meetings with Assad--one lasting nine hours without a break.

If he succeeds, his reward will be a long series of direct Arab-Israeli negotiations that will continue to demand American intervention whenever an impasse occurs. Baker has said he does not intend to spend as much time on the negotiations once they are under way, but most Middle East experts believe that will be a hard promise to keep.

Still, simply getting the adversaries to a conference table is likely to be a major achievement. The last such effort was the Geneva conference convened by Kissinger in 1973. But Syria refused to attend, and the result was a series of indirect negotiations instead of face-to-face talks.

“The important thing that Baker is trying to achieve is an agreement” by the Arabs and Israel “to enter into direct negotiations,” noted Joseph Sisco, who was a key Kissinger aide. “In Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy, it was a third-party arrangement, with no face-to-face talks.” If Baker succeeds, Sisco said, his achievement will be “comparable to Kissinger’s.”

Another former Kissinger aide, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, went further: “The Kissinger shuttles were much smaller pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. Baker’s trying to get a more comprehensive process going.”

William B. Quandt, a Middle East scholar who worked at the National Security Council during the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Jimmy Carter, cited two other points on which Baker has already outdone Kissinger. “Assad seems to have crossed a threshold in terms of being willing to negotiate with Israel--that’s the most interesting development,” he said. “And for the first time in the history of Arab-Israeli negotiations, the Palestinians will be present in their own right.”

If Baker does succeed in bringing Assad and Shamir to the conference table, history will have to judge who gets more credit--Bush, who had the idea, or his secretary of state, who carried it out. “There’s always a possibility of friction there,” Sisco pointed out. “There were times Nixon wasn’t too happy about the adulation that surrounded Kissinger.”

But secretaries of state tend to get the credit when they put in long and visible hours of personal negotiating, as Baker has in this case. “Kissinger clearly got the benefit of the Middle East shuttles and both the benefits and disadvantages of the Vietnam peace talks,” Sonnenfeldt said. “We got a Nobel Prize for Vietnam, but it left a bitter taste in people’s mouths. . . . On the other hand, Nixon got the credit for the opening to China.”

Already, White House and State Department aides are negotiating on whether Bush or Baker will open the Middle East peace conference--although there is no outward sign of friction over the issue.

Almost unspoken amid the gambits and maneuvers of the Middle East is a question about American politics: Could Baker become a Republican presidential candidate in 1996, whether or not Bush wins reelection next year? And would a peace treaty between Israel and the Arabs help him get there?

Baker insists that he is not interested in the White House. “The only thing I’m running for in 1996,” he likes to say, “is the creek outside my house in Wyoming”--his favorite fishing spot.

But a significant number of Republican political strategists believe that he would make a logical candidate--although he lost his only campaign for elective office, for attorney general of Texas in 1978.

“He’s on every short list I’ve heard so far,” said GOP consultant Roger Stone, who worked for Baker on the Bush presidential campaign in 1988. “He doesn’t have a firm electoral base, but he does have a media base”--meaning that while Baker has never won an election, he is so well known that he could try anyway.

“Use the example of George Bush,” Stone added. “Here’s a guy who took a series of appointive jobs and was able to parlay it into election as President of the United States.”

But skeptics remain. “It’s not impossible--but it’s at the outer limits,” countered Eddie Mahe, a Republican consultant whose “short list” for 1996 does not include Baker’s name. “If he really pulls it off--if there really is something resembling peace in the Middle East--that would be a powerful plus. . . . But I’m not sure he has enough strength in the domestic area.”

Baker’s Quest for Peace

Secretary of State James A. Baker III has made seven previous trips this year in an attempt to get Mideast peace talks going, repeatedly crisscrossing the Mideast and also visiting Europe. He arrives today in Cairo to begin his eighth trip. This Week’s Trip

Cairo, EGYPT (Today)

Amman, JORDAN (Monday)

Damascus, SYRIA (Tuesday)

Jeruselem, ISRAEL (Wednesday)

Previous Trips

Trip 1: March 7-17. Riyadh and Taif (Saudi Arabia), Kuwait, Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, Moscow

Trip 2: April 6-12. Ankara and Diyarbakir (Turkey), Jerusalem, Cairo, Damascus

Trip 3: April 16-27. Luxembourg, Jerusalem, Aqaba (Jordan), Cairo, Jidda, Kuwait, Damascus, Kislovodsk (Soviet Union)

Trip 4: May 10-16. Damascus, Cairo, Amman, Jerusalem

Trip 5: July 18-22. Damascus, Cairo, Alexandria, Jidda, Amman, Jerusalem

Trip 6: Aug. 1-5. Moscow, Jerusalem, Amman, Rabat, Tunis, Algiers

Trip 7: Sept. 16-20. Jerusalem, Cairo, Damascus, Amman, Damascus

Source: State Department