2 Jerusalem Natives on Jordan Team : Delegates: The two Palestinians represent an apparent effort to skirt Israeli objections.

Jordan’s prime minister announced Saturday that he has formed a 14-member delegation to this week’s Middle East peace conference that includes two Palestinian natives of Jerusalem, in an apparent attempt to skirt Israel’s refusal to negotiate with Palestinians from its capital city.

The delegation announced by Prime Minister Taher Masri includes former Trade Minister Anwar Khatib, who was governor of Jerusalem for more than two decades, and Walid Khalidi, a professor of international relations at Harvard University who was born in Jerusalem.

Israel has said it would not negotiate with any Palestinian delegates from East Jerusalem, captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed, because that would imply that Israel considers Jerusalem subject to negotiation.

The Palestine Liberation Organization and its Arab partners have insisted that Jerusalem be an early and important subject of the talks, which will begin Wednesday.

The Palestinians bowed to Israel’s wishes when they appointed a 14-member delegation last week that included only residents of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, accompanied by a non-participating advisory committee that does include some Jerusalem residents.

The Jordanian representatives, however, will be active participants in the talks, forming a joint delegation with the Palestinian nominees. U.S. and other Arab diplomats had suggested for several months that naming Jordanians from Jerusalem might be one way of effecting a compromise on the issue.

Palestinians make up nearly half of Jordan’s population of 3.5 million.

PLO chief Yasser Arafat has made moves in the past several days to strike a conciliatory pose, affirming that he had no plans to communicate with Palestinian delegates during the conference and saying he would consider a cease-fire if Israel asked him to.

“Let them ask me the question officially, first of all, and I will reply. I am president of the state of Palestine and not of a charitable association,” Arafat told a news conference in Tunis, Tunisia. He suggested that a cease-fire might include a halt to armed attacks on Israel from inside and outside the occupied territories, a freeze on new Jewish settlements and the release of prisoners.

Israel has refused to have any dealings with the PLO, which it considers a terrorist organization, and has threatened to walk out of the talks if any of the Palestinian delegates declare that they represent the PLO.

The two top members of the Palestinian negotiating team, Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi, arrived in Cairo on Saturday for coordination talks with Egyptian officials, along with the head of the Palestinian delegation, Haider Abdel-Shafi, a 71-year-old Gaza physician who was a member of the PLO’s first executive committee in 1964.

Earlier in the day, the joint Jordanian-Palestinian team met for the first time to coordinate negotiating strategies and discuss details of a political coordination agreement signed between Jordan’s King Hussein and Arafat last week.

The remainder of Jordan’s delegation, to be headed by Foreign Minister Kamel Abu Jaber, is made up primarily of career diplomats, technical experts and academics, including Jordan’s ambassadors to Belgium, Britain and the Soviet Union.

Masri also has recommended a seven-member advisory committee to accompany the delegation that includes several natives of the West Bank.

Lebanon also named an eight-member delegation Saturday, headed by Foreign Minister Faris Bouez.

Despite Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s decision to head the Israeli delegation himself, none of the Arab parties appear inclined to send heads of government. The Egyptians have not officially announced their full delegation, but government press reports said it will be headed by Foreign Minister Amir Moussa and will include senior Egyptian diplomats and a number of public figures, including former Prime Minister Mustafa Khalil.