Baker Progress Reported on 2nd Round of Bilateral Talks

Secretary of State James A. Baker III plans to convene a second round of Arab-Israeli peace talks in Washington later this month, U.S. and Arab diplomats said Friday.

Baker has made significant progress toward winning agreement on the location and timing of the bilateral talks and may issue official invitations to Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians as early as next week, they said.

State Department officials warned that no final accord has been reached. But Egyptian Foreign Minister Amir Moussa said in Cairo that he expects the talks to resume in Washington “within two weeks.”

After months of diplomatic prodding by the United States and the Soviet Union, the Arab parties and Israel held a first round of face-to-face bilateral talks in Madrid last Sunday but recessed without setting a date or place for a second round.

Israel wanted the talks in the Middle East, but Syria wanted them to remain in Madrid. After a flurry of suggestions ranging from Switzerland to the Greek island of Rhodes to the restored colonial town of Williamsburg, Va., Washington emerged as a compromise, the officials say.

Among Washington’s other virtues, “it would mean that Jim Baker won’t be constantly asked to drop everything and fly somewhere to break a deadlock,” a senior Arab diplomat noted.

Baker is also trying to win agreement on a date and place for multilateral talks in which about 30 countries would discuss disarmament, economic development, water rights and other Middle East regional issues, but progress on that front has been slower, the officials said.

An Arab diplomat said the multilateral talks may begin in Moscow in the first week of December. Under that scenario, the Soviet Union would host the talks because of its role as co-sponsor of the Middle East peace conference, he said.

But a U.S. official said the tide is running against Moscow because holding the talks there would be an unnecessary burden on a Soviet government that is already preoccupied with internal problems.