New Mideast Talks Called for Dec. 4 : Diplomacy: Washington will be the site. U.S. acts after concluding that Arabs and Israelis would not be able to agree among themselves on a time and place.

Conceding that the decision fully satisfied no one, the Bush Administration on Friday called on Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians to resume the Middle East peace talks Dec. 4 in Washington.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, in consultation with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, picked the time and place after determining that the parties would be unable to reach agreement among themselves.

Assuming that all of the parties agree to the proposal, the Washington talks would be a resumption of the face-to-face negotiations that began Nov. 3 in Madrid after the acrimonious formal opening session of the Middle East peace conference. In this phase of the talks, Israel is to hold separate, substantive talks with Syria, Lebanon and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

In picking Washington, the United States and the Soviet Union, as co-chairs of the conference, turned down both Israel’s proposal to hold the talks in the Middle East and the Arabs’ call for meetings in Europe.

“Washington, D.C., was no one’s first choice,” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said.

But the timing of the invitation seemed to be more of a rebuff to Israel than to the Arabs because it came while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was visiting in Washington.

A few minutes before the announcement was made at the White House and the State Department, Shamir had appealed to President Bush to support Israel’s view that the talks should take place in the region, either alternating between Jerusalem and the Arab capitals or at a neutral site such as Cyprus.

Shamir, wrapping up a weeklong coast-to-coast visit, told reporters after his half-hour talk with Bush that the venue question was still under discussion. But Tutwiler said later that cables containing the invitation were sent out Thursday night, after Shamir had talked to Baker but before his meeting with Bush.

Jordan became the first country to accept the U.S.-Soviet invitation.

Asked what would happen if one or more of the parties refused to attend, Tutwiler said: “That’s their choice. . . . Obviously, it would be an unfortunate choice. It would obviously be very disappointing, not only to the co-sponsors but, I think, to many countries and peoples around the world.”

Nevertheless, U.S. officials said they are confident that all of the delegations will attend the Washington talks because if any of them refused to participate, the reluctant party would immediately be blamed for torpedoing the peace process. None of the participants seems to be ready to take that step.

The upcoming talks constitute the heart of the three-stage peace process. Stage I was the public opening session in Madrid; Stage III will be a regional conference on water resources, economic development, arms control and other topics to be attended by as many as 20 countries.

But the middle phase involves direct negotiations over such war-and-peace issues as borders, Palestinian rights and Israel’s very existence. The talks are intended to produce peace agreements ending the technical state of war that has persisted for more than four decades between Israel and all of its neighbors, except for Egypt, which agreed to a peace treaty in 1979.

Israel’s objective is to obtain peace treaties with Syria, Jordan and Lebanon and to hammer out details of a limited form of self-rule for the Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. On the Arab side, Syria wants to regain the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967 and annexed in 1981; Lebanon wants to get Israeli troops out of the southern part of that country, and the Palestinians want to set up an independent state.

All of the talks are expected to be long and difficult. Israel and the Palestinians have agreed in principle to an “interim” period of Palestinian autonomy but are far apart on important details. The Israel-Syria and Israel-Lebanon negotiations are not that far along because the sides disagree even on what they are to talk about.

Talking to reporters in the White House drive, Shamir seemed to hint at a change in Israel’s earlier insistence that it would never withdraw from any of the territory that its troops occupied in 1967. “The territorial problem is a very essential part of the conference, and it is understandable that it will be on the agenda of the negotiations,” he said.

But in an interview with CNN, he elaborated: “If somebody will understand it (willingness to negotiate) as a readiness to give up some territories, I did not say it. . . . We are ready to negotiate and convince our partners . . . that it is unjustified to take from our small country a part of its land.”

At the start, at least, there will be no mediators or referees.