Stalled Arab-Israeli Talks in Recess : Mideast: Only ‘incremental progress’ reported. Negotiators may return to Washington for another round next month.

Arab and Israeli negotiators ended a largely fruitless round of peace talks Thursday but tentatively agreed to return next month for 10 more days of conferences before the Bush Administration ends.

Assistant Secretary of State Edward P. Djerejian, summing up the seventh round of talks, said the negotiators made only “incremental progress” but were determined to keep trying, despite military skirmishing across the Israel-Lebanon border and the uncertainty presented by a new American presidential administration.

As the round ended, Washington called for new talks starting Dec. 7. Israel immediately accepted and officials of the Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Palestinian delegations said they intended to be there, too, though the final decision will be made by Arab foreign ministers at a meeting in Beirut later this month.

Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the largely static round of talks is that they will continue, despite problems that almost surely would have derailed the peace process if they had come earlier.

“These negotiations are reaching . . . the point where various substantive thresholds can be reached and where substantive progress can be made on a timely basis,” Djerejian said of the talks that began at the Madrid peace conference more than a year ago. “But we’ve got to keep working at it. We’re not there yet.”

He said Washington wants to stage another round of talks to show that the negotiations “should not be distracted during our (presidential) transition.” Israeli and Arab spokespersons agreed that it is important to keep the momentum going into the Clinton Administration.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials ruled out a round of lame-duck shuttle diplomacy by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Both Arab and Israeli delegates expressed interest in a last-gasp trip by Baker, whose earlier diplomacy brought the two sides to the table. But Bush Administration officials concluded the tour would be unlikely to produce substantive progress.

Although there were no claims of a breakthrough, this round saw Israel and the Palestinians begin discussions of how the land of the West Bank could be divided between Israeli settlers and a proposed Palestinian self-governing authority. The Israeli government of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir refused to consider a division of land, insisting the self-governing authority would have jurisdiction only over Palestinian residents of the territory but not over any part of the land itself.

“In order to show to the Palestinians our seriousness . . . with the new government in Israel, we introduced some territorial elements,” Israeli spokesman Yossi Gal said. “We introduced some discussion on questions of infrastructure, questions of land and questions of water.”

But Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian spokeswoman, said the Israeli concept divides the territory into three categories: Israeli settlements, which would remain under Israeli control; Arab towns and villages, which would be controlled by the Palestinian authority; and other territory, which would be allocated later. That plan is unacceptable, she said, because “all the territory occupied in 1967 (during the Arab-Israeli war) is occupied territory.”