U.S. Seeks ‘Timely Action’ From Israel on Deportees : Mideast: Joining in effort to restart peace talks, Egypt will press Jerusalem to accelerate review of Palestinians.

The United States and Egypt, seeking to eliminate a major roadblock to Middle East peace talks, are urging Israel to launch early judicial reviews of the deportations of 396 Palestinian militants to Lebanon, U.S. and Egyptian officials said Friday.

The Clinton Administration “would like to see timely action” from Israeli review boards that can cancel deportation orders, a senior U.S. official said after talks here between Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

And Mubarak plans to go further and to actively press Israel to “accelerate” the review process to allow dozens of the deportees to return to their homes in Israeli-occupied territory, U.S. and Egyptian officials said.

Israel expelled the deportees to Lebanon in December, asserting that they were members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, outlawed militant Muslim groups. But the deportees camped near the border after Lebanese soldiers blocked their way, and they demanded that the peace talks stop.

The four Arab delegations at the negotiations--Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians--complied, refusing to set a date for the talks’ resumption. But they have also said they want to restart the negotiations as soon as the deportee issue can be settled.

Earlier this month, after negotiations with Christopher, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced that he would allow 100 deportees to return immediately, allow the rest to appeal their expulsions and allow all 396 to return by the end of the year.

But the deportees rejected that plan.

U.S. officials took pains to emphasize to reporters that they are not asking Israel to change that agreement now. They said Christopher does not plan to press Israel directly on the issue, because he promised Rabin in their earlier negotiations that he would not ask for new concessions on top of the initial plan.

But the Americans also said they believe Mubarak’s proposal for accelerated judicial reviews is worth looking at because it would not require changing the earlier plan.

“It’s not a change in the package,” one senior official said. “But the package obviously has moving parts in it. . . . There is no decision to press this on the Israelis. It was an Egyptian suggestion.”

The review process allows the Israeli government to cancel deportation orders at will and does not require the deportees to file a formal appeal--something many of them have refused to do because they reject Israel’s authority.

U.S. and Egyptian officials said they did not know how the 396 deportees would react if Israel--atop its existing offer for 100 to return--gave a sizable additional number of them the right to come back. But if the Palestinians refuse “for the sake of refusing, they will discredit themselves,” an Egyptian official said.

There was no immediate reaction from Israel. Rabin came under heavy attack for the earlier plan from the conservative opposition in his Parliament, the Knesset.

Christopher is scheduled to arrive in Jerusalem on Monday for talks with Rabin, other Israeli officials and Palestinian leaders. U.S. officials said Egypt may present its proposal to the Israeli government over the weekend, in advance of Christopher’s arrival.

A senior Egyptian official said the idea behind Mubarak’s proposal is that if Israel offers to readmit a significant, additional number of deportees, the Arab parties in the negotiations could then declare that the problem is on its way to being solved--and rejoin the talks.

But “this depends on concrete results,” he said. “If the review process ends up saying that only 15 can return, that doesn’t do anything.”

One key goal is to persuade the Palestinians to rejoin the talks, he said, but “that will be a very hard sell.”

“You have to give (Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser) Arafat something so he can argue, among the Palestinians, that the peace process is important and that with this new Administration there is hope in the peace process,” he said.

A U.S. official was less indulgent toward the Palestinians. “It’s incumbent on the Palestinians, Hamas specifically, to make a positive response” to Israel’s efforts, he said.

Christopher and his aides said they were encouraged by Mubarak’s willingness to work for an early resumption of the peace talks.

The Egyptian said he would urge the Palestinians and other Arabs to rejoin the negotiations “as soon as possible,” they said.

Christopher and Mubarak also discussed other problem areas in the Middle East and Africa, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Angola. They found themselves in broad agreement on almost all issues, aides said.

Earlier Friday, Christopher and his wife, Marie, toured Egypt’s most famous ancient monuments, the three Great Pyramids and the Sphinx on the edge of the Sahara Desert just west of Cairo.

“It’s an awesome sight,” the secretary of state said.

“It’s a reminder . . . to try to do enduring things, to build structures that will last--not as long as the Pyramids or the Sphinx, but not entirely transitory.”

Later Friday, Christopher flew to Amman, Jordan, for talks with King Hussein. He was scheduled to visit Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Israel before flying to Geneva next week for a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev.