U.S., Soviets Vow Not to Interfere in Arab-Israeli Talks : Diplomacy: But both Bush and Gorbachev hold out the possibility of taking a hand in the second phase.

By DANIEL WILLIAMS and KIM MURPHY

Oct. 30, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

MADRID —

With history’s most comprehensive Middle East peace conference less than a day away, President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Tuesday that the sponsoring superpowers will not try to interfere in Arab-Israeli deliberations--at least for now.

“What is important is getting the parties together, and one way you don’t do that is for either the Soviet Union or the United States to try to impose a settlement,” Bush told a press conference after a mini-summit meeting with Gorbachev. “So let them sort it out.”

For the record:

12:00 a.m. Oct. 31, 1991 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday October 31, 1991 Home Edition Part A Page 3 Column 6 Metro Desk 1 inches; 31 words Type of Material: Correction
Occupied territories--An article in Wednesday’s Times incorrectly characterized the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel captured the territories in the 1967 Middle East War but has not formally annexed them.

Gorbachev, at the same session, said: “Let’s just open the conference and let’s start working.”

Nevertheless, both presidents held out the possibility that Washington and Moscow might take a hand later, if the bilateral talks that are scheduled to follow the formal three-day opening appear to bog down.

“We’re going to try to facilitate as much as possible, use all of the remedies that we have at our disposal,” Gorbachev said through an official interpreter.

“We’re available,” Bush said. “We’re there.”

Secretary of State James A. Baker III said he is prepared to remain in Madrid to play a mediator role during the key phase of the conference--separate talks between Israel and each of its closest Arab neighbors. These bilateral talks will probably begin Sunday.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said that Baker “hopes to participate even down the road. He hopes to stay with it.”

Previously, the State Department had said that a high-level envoy would be named to keep watch on the talks because Baker’s schedule would not let him remain in Madrid very long. But Baker said after the Bush-Gorbachev press conference that the use of an envoy had been ruled out.

After the speeches, which begin today, Israel wants the United States and Soviet Union to disappear from the scene. Otherwise, the Israelis insist, the Arabs will not negotiate directly with Israel but through Washington, in hopes that the Bush Administration will impose a solution.

The Arabs, on the other hand, expect the superpower sponsors, especially the United States, to play an active role in forcing Israel to surrender occupied land. The Arab governments believe that U.N. resolutions require Israel to give up land in return for secure borders.

“All of the Arabs believe that there should be the fullest possible participation by the United States and the Soviet Union,” said an Arab delegate. That, he said, means a U.S. presence in Israel’s separate talks with its neighbors and the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

“You can’t leave Syria and Israel alone to negotiate,” said another Arab diplomat. “Somebody’s got to be in the room to make sure they don’t all come out and lie.”

Saeb Erekat, a West Bank political science professor and member of an advisory committee of non-negotiating Palestinians, said the Palestinians fear the talks could break down without a U.S. presence to keep them going.

A senior U.S. official said earlier that the United States would attend the bilateral talks only if requested by both sides. Israel’s opposition seemed to rule that out.

But the official said that U.S. representatives would try to push the talks along from “just outside the door,” if they were not invited in.

Baker met Tuesday night with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh to iron out final procedural matters.

Bush planned to meet privately with each of the delegations this morning before the opening session of the conference, which will take place at the ornate 18th-Century Royal Palace in the Spanish capital.

In another move that could have substantial significance, Saudi Arabia said it will participate directly in the talks as part of the observer delegation from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council of Persian Gulf nations. The kingdom’s flamboyant ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, arrived in Madrid early Tuesday to join the conference.

Arab sources said the move reflected an attempt to persuade Israel that the Gulf nations are fully behind the peace talks--and to counter Syria’s threats to derail regional negotiations between Arabs and the Israelis if no progress is made on the issue of Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab lands.

“It’s going to make people feel more comfortable about the peace process,” said one Arab source close to the talks. “It’s intended as a psychological gesture. It shows Saudi Arabia is committed to the peace process,”

Saudi Arabia, for decades the bankroller of Arab animosity toward Israel, is to many Israelis the symbol of Arab hostility. Early in his eight-month effort to set up this conference, Baker had sought full Saudi participation to provide a psychological incentive to Israel.

He was clearly disappointed when the Saudis balked at attending the conference, and he later hailed as a breakthrough the decision of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council to send an observer. Bandar, a nephew of King Fahd, raises the profile of Saudi participation.

Shamir arrived in Madrid with his negotiating team and launched a heated verbal offensive against armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers in the past two days. “There are those who are consumed not with the passion for peace but with the passion for blood,” he said in a prepared statement.

He said, however, that the assaults would not interfere with Israel’s participation in the conference. “Some might have expected, in the face of this terror, that Israel would not attend the conference,” he said. “But despite this violence, our quest for peace is unrelenting.”

Meanwhile, a group of militant Jewish settlers from the West Bank announced in Madrid that they will create two new settlements, one on the site of Monday’s bus ambush and the other near Jericho, where Israeli travelers were killed in a similar attack three years ago.

A few hours after Shamir arrived, a delegation from the Palestine Liberation Organization flew into Madrid, underlining the PLO’s backstage role in the talks. The PLO has no official standing at the talks, but the five-member PLO group will work with delegates from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel annexed after its 1967 war with its neighbors.

Palestinians made no effort to minimize the importance of the group, led by PLO executive committee member Nabil Shaath.

“Everybody knows there will be constant contact with the PLO,” said Rashid Khalidi, a member of the “guidance committee” directing Palestinian negotiators.

Khalidi, who teaches modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Chicago, admitted to frustration over the PLO’s banishment from the talks themselves. “They have been banned from the conference hall, from the hotel where we stay, but the idea that they should be banned from the same city, country or continent--even Israel would not be so extreme.”

Israel expressed mild unhappiness with the PLO presence, but said that it will not interfere with the opening of the conference. “So what if the Palestinians make a phone call to someone we don’t like?” asked Baruch Bina, a Foreign Ministry spokesman. “So long as the PLO is not part of the delegation, that is what is important.”

Throughout the day, Palestinians signaled that they are prepared to approach the talks pragmatically. Faisal Husseini, head of their advisory team, told reporters that the Palestinians hope to negotiate a period of autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would ultimately lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state confederated with Jordan.

Although Israel has opposed statehood for the Palestinians, it has not closed the door on some form of confederation between the Jordanians and the Palestinians. A period of interim Palestinian self-rule is one of the key points of Baker’s terms of understanding with each of the parties to the talks.

But Syrian officials were showing fewer signs of flexibility.

“We are repeating what has been said by the whole world: land for peace,” said Zuhair Janaan, official spokesman for the Syrian delegation. “So the others must change their tone and ideas. This is a golden opportunity, and if it’s not seized very well, I think the whole world will pay.”

Syrian officials so far have refused to grant interviews to Israeli journalists. Janaan said the government is awaiting progress on the peace talks.

“We are going to the peace conference, so before the opening, no contacts should be made at the official level,” he said. “Afterward, it depends on the atmosphere. If the Israelis are going to say no land, no Golan Heights, why should we talk to them?”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story.