Shamir Tells of Plan to Stall Talks : Mideast: Defeated prime minister says he would have prolonged negotiations until West Bank Israelis had increased fivefold.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who is soon to leave office and go into retirement, has told an Israeli newspaper that he had planned to prolong Middle East peace talks until he could multiply the Israeli population of the West Bank by nearly a factor of five.

Talks to which Shamir committed his government have focused on self-rule for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. After three years of autonomy, negotiations were scheduled to begin on sovereignty over the land.

“I would have conducted autonomy talks for 10 years, and in the meantime we would have reached one-half million souls in Judea and Samaria,” he said in an interview published Friday, using the biblical terms for the West Bank of the Jordan River.

More than 100,000 Israelis live in the West Bank among 1.1 million Palestinians. A few thousand Israelis have settled in Gaza, the impoverished home of 600,000 Arabs.

Shamir’s spokesman, Ehud Gol, said that the interview, printed in the Maariv newspaper, was carried out by phone and he did not hear Shamir’s comments. While expressing doubts that the usually circumspect Shamir would admit to such a strategy, Gol added: “Who cares? We’re going to be out of power in a few days.”

Shamir’s rule crumbled with this week’s election, which vaulted the Labor Party’s Yitzhak Rabin to the verge of power. Shamir technically remains in office until Rabin forms a Cabinet and wins support of a majority of the Knesset, or Parliament, a process that could take weeks.

The interview with Maariv appeared to confirm suspicion in Washington and elsewhere that Shamir had been buying time by agreeing to the American-brokered talks. Further, in his comments the prime minister joined those on the far right who predict that self-rule for Palestinians will lead to Palestinian independence.

Shamir conceded that his view that Israel must dominate all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea had not captured the imagination of all Israelis. “I didn’t believe there was a majority in favor of a greater Land of Israel, but it could have been attained over time,” he told the newspaper. “Without such a basis, there would be nothing to stop the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Shamir, 76, hinted that he will retire from public life after the electoral defeat.

His closest political protege, Defense Minister Moshe Arens, announced his own retirement from politics Thursday. Arens conceded that many voters had rejected the Likud expansionist ideology. “A part of the public does not see the slogan ‘greater Land of Israel’ as an adequate or sufficient response in grappling with the complexity of problems associated with Palestinians in the territories,” he said on television.

Arens’ departure reduced the number of potential successors for Shamir’s place at the head of the party.

Foreign Minister David Levy, a rival of Arens, expressed regret over the departure and then called for a party convention at which he would serve as acting chairman.

Rabin, the winning Labor Party candidate in the elections, has set a short timetable for the talks with Palestinians. Rabin told a press conference Friday that he aims to complete talks for Palestinian self-rule within a year.

He will offer the Palestinians elections to choose their negotiators and authority to govern their areas during the self-rule period. The results will also change the balance of power between the Palestinian leadership in the territories and the Palestine Liberation Organization in exile, Rabin said.