Bush May Meet Gorbachev at Mideast Talks

Apparently extending their tradition of impromptu summits, President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev may meet in Switzerland late this month to open an Arab-Israeli peace conference and discuss their competing nuclear disarmament proposals, U.S. and Soviet officials said Tuesday.

Officials in both Washington and Moscow said the two presidents are considering a meeting between Oct. 27 and Oct. 29, to coincide with the expected opening of the Middle East peace conference under joint U.S.-Soviet sponsorship.

U.S. officials said that the Arab-Israeli talks are scheduled to begin Oct. 29 in the Swiss city of Lausanne, barring last-minute objections from the nations involved--a date that would fulfill the two presidents’ pledge to start the conference by October’s end.

A White House official said that no Bush-Gorbachev meeting has been set but indicated that one possibility under discussion is a brief summit at the outset of the Middle East conference.

That would let Bush and Gorbachev reap some political benefit from their success in convening the Arab-Israeli talks--and to pursue their separate disarmament proposals face-to-face.

In recent weeks, Bush has proposed new U.S.-Soviet negotiations to ban land-based, long-range nuclear missiles with more than one warhead. Gorbachev proposed cutting all nuclear weapons by 50% from ceilings established by the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed in July.

In Moscow, Gorbachev’s spokesman, Andrei S. Grachev, said the Soviet president is still waiting for a U.S. reply to his proposals. Grachev said the opening of the Mideast peace conference would be a logical point to hold a superpower summit. “As the conference is being convened on the initiative of the Soviet Union and the United States, the two countries’ presidents might well attend its opening.” They could use the occasion “to discuss other things,” he added.

The apparent agreement by Israel and its Arab neighbors on a date and place for the conference suggested that--after seven months of diplomatic haggling--the final procedural obstacles to the meeting have been overcome.

The conference would be the first formal, face-to-face meeting between Israel and all its Arab neighbors, including Syria, long the most militant enemy of the Jewish state.

“We are currently . . . on the verge of a major breakthrough in the peace process in the Middle East based on United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338,” Bush said Tuesday, apparently referring to the imminent announcement of the conference date.

Officials in the Middle East said that after the formal opening, the participants--Israel, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation--would break into bilateral meetings. Those talks were expected to begin in Lausanne but could be moved elsewhere after a few days, the sources said.

But that scheduling plan assumes that all parties will agree to detailed conference rules by this weekend, permitting Bush and Gorbachev to send out invitations 10 days before the start, as they have promised, officials warned.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III has not yet tied down all of the procedural loose ends for the conference, they said.

Baker held a marathon meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad on Tuesday, continuing well beyond midnight. Presumably, Assad was holding out on some meeting details, although neither U.S. nor Syrian officials would discuss the substance of the talks.

Syria has already agreed in principle to attend the talks.

A more difficult unresolved issue centers on who will represent the Palestinians. Baker is scheduled to meet in Jerusalem today with Palestinian leaders from the West Bank and Gaza to continue discussion of the selection of Palestinian delegates.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive council is also scheduled to discuss the matter today. U.S. officials believe that the PLO’s tacit approval is necessary to give the delegation credibility. But Israel refuses to negotiate with the PLO or its surrogates. U.S. officials say Baker hopes to produce a list of Palestinian delegates who would pass muster with the PLO and Israel.

Diplomats said Lausanne was picked as the conference site because of Switzerland’s historic neutrality, making it acceptable to Israel and the Arabs. Most major diplomatic meetings in Switzerland are held in Geneva, but Baker reportedly ruled that out because he did not want these talks compared with an abortive Middle East peace conference held there in 1973. Cities that were considered but rejected included Cairo, The Hague and Buenos Aires.

If Bush and Gorbachev meet in Switzerland, it would be their seventh summit in less than two years.

McManus reported from Washington and Parks from Moscow. Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Damascus and Douglas Jehl in Washington contributed to this report.