U.S. Pressures Arabs to Return to Peace Talks : Diplomacy: Criticism of Israel’s offer to take back only one-fourth of the deportees is brushed aside.

The Clinton Administration began to pressure Arab parties Tuesday to resume Middle East peace talks, brushing aside strident Arab criticism of Israel’s reluctant agreement to take back only about one-quarter of 396 Palestinian deportees.

A State Department official said the Administration plans to announce a date soon for resumption of the separate but parallel negotiations between Israel and Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians. But there is no certainty that the Arabs will show up.

Arab governments and the Palestine Liberation Organization joined in rejecting Israel’s plan to repatriate 100 of the deportees immediately and take back the rest before year’s end. In their squalid tent camp in southern Lebanon, the deportees vowed that none will return until all are free to do so.

Administration officials say the outcry is understandable. But they warn the Arabs that if they refuse to resume the peace talks, they will lose their best opportunity to influence Israeli policy and forfeit any chance to establish a cordial relationship with President Clinton, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the rest of the new U.S. government.

In effect, the Administration is arguing that Hamas, the militant Islamic organization to which most of the deportees belong, poses as much danger to Arab governments and the PLO as it does to Israel. Washington is urging the Arabs to put aside the emotional deportation issue and concentrate on the benefits they can gain from resuming the talks.

Hamas is a rival of the PLO for the allegiance of West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians. Organizations with Islamic ideology similar to Hamas are a potential threat to the governments in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. But the cause of the Hamas deportees has struck such a chord with the Arab masses that the governments and the PLO must give them at least rhetorical support.

“At the regime level, there is no real emotional sympathy for the deportees,” said William B. Quandt, a Brookings Institution scholar and a former Middle East expert for the National Security Council. “But that’s not what they have to worry about. They have to be concerned with how it looks to their own Islamic extremists.

“Some of the regimes might agree with the Israelis that these are dangerous people,” Quandt said. But he said the Arab governments, which might have looked the other way if the Hamas militants had been quietly jailed, cannot condone Israel’s use of deportation.

Before the Dec. 17 deportations clouded the atmosphere, the Syrian and Jordanian governments had become increasingly optimistic about eventually reaching a favorable peace agreement with Israel.

“The Jordanians and the Syrians have an interest in turning up,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former NSC staffer. “The Palestinians have more to lose (by boycotting the talks) than anyone else, but I think they will have to stay away for at least a token period of time to gain credibility” with the Palestinian population.