Baker, Shamir Report Progress but No Deal : Mideast: More talks are planned for today. The Palestinian delegation remains a sticking point.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir reported progress but no deal Thursday after a seven-hour meeting failed to resolve all of Israel’s questions about the Middle East peace conference that the United States wants to hold before the month’s end.

“We had a very good meeting, and we made good progress,” Baker said as he returned to his hotel. Israeli spokesmen used similar words.

But Baker said he will be back at the prime minister’s office a little before noon today to try to win Israel’s approval of conference procedures.

“We are on no collision course,” a senior Israeli official said. “There is no specific point so crucial or dramatic that it could lead to a breakup.”

But Zalman Shoval, Israeli ambassador to the United States, told Israel Radio that the main sticking point focuses on the Palestinian delegation to the talks. Shoval, who attended part of the Baker-Shamir meeting, said Israel cannot close the deal until it receives the names of the Palestinian delegates.

Baker had hoped to receive a list of names from Palestinian leaders Thursday night, but that meeting was postponed until today because the Palestinians were not ready.

A Palestinian source said the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunis did not give its final approval to conference plans in time for the scheduled Thursday night meeting but is expected to do so before this morning’s session.

The Israeli-PLO tug-of-war over Palestinian representation is designed to give each side a face-saving way to participate in the talks without having to surrender basic principles.

Israel refuses to deal with the PLO, which it regards as a terrorist organization. For its part, the PLO insists that it is the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, both those living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and those residing abroad.

The United States has devised a delicate compromise that would permit the PLO to claim to appoint and supervise the Palestinian delegates, while allowing Israel to maintain that it is not negotiating with acknowledged PLO members. But the plan works only if both sides choose to overlook glaring restrictions on their claimed authority.

For instance, the PLO can appoint the Palestinian delegation only if it agrees to pick Palestinians that Israel finds acceptable. Also, the PLO had to agree to form a joint delegation with Jordan rather than sending independent representation. And the Israelis can participate in the process only if they ignore the way the Palestinians were selected.

So far, both sides seem to be ready to swallow hard and go along.

An Israeli official said that aides to the prime minister are jockeying with Foreign Ministry officials for places on the Israeli delegation even though Shamir insists that Israel has not made a final decision to attend. The official said the momentum seems too strong to reverse.

Meanwhile, Soviet Foreign Minister Boris D. Pankin met for two hours Thursday with Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy to discuss the schedule for resuming diplomatic relations, which were severed between their nations in 1967. Israeli officials said that no decisions were made and that the talks will resume today.

Pankin is starting a six-day tour of Israel, Syria, Egypt and Jordan to reinforce Baker’s effort to organize the conference. Washington and Moscow plan to act as co-sponsors of the talks. Baker plans to confer with Pankin today between his meetings with the Palestinians and Shamir.

In Tunis on Thursday, the Associated Press reported that the PLO had selected a seven-member delegation. But Palestinian sources in Jerusalem said the plan is to send 14 Palestinians and 14 Jordanians to the conference. They said 13 Palestinians and a token Jordanian would negotiate over matters affecting the Palestinians while the ratio would be reversed on matters affecting Jordan. It was not clear whether that formula would be acceptable to Washington or Jerusalem.