Christopher Seeks Arabs’ Help to Restart Mideast Peace Talks : Diplomacy: Secretary of state gives first public endorsement of persuading Israel to allow ‘significant numbers’ of Palestinian deportees to return.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher sought Arab agreement Saturday to restart the stalled Middle East peace talks if Israel allows “significant numbers” of Palestinian deportees to return home, and he expressed optimism that such a compromise would be acceptable to both sides.

After meeting for several hours with Jordan’s King Hussein, Christopher gave his first public endorsement of an idea that U.S. officials have been floating informally: that Israel should quickly review the cases of the 396 Palestinian deportees still in southern Lebanon, and allow many of them to return.

Israel expelled 415 Palestinians to Lebanon on Dec. 17, charging that they are members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, two outlawed militant Muslim groups. Some have been allowed to return, but 396 remain in a hillside tent camp.

The issue has become a major obstacle to the resumption of the U.S.-sponsored peace talks because the Arab participants--Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians--have refused to return to the negotiations unless the deportations are reversed.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, after negotiations with Christopher, agreed early this month to allow 101 deportees to return immediately, and the rest to appeal their expulsions and return by the end of the year.

But the deportees rejected that proposal.

At a news conference in King Hussein’s palace, Christopher suggested that Israel could help matters by reviewing the deportees’ cases and allowing some to return.

He noted that Israel has already agreed to the principle of holding a review under the early February agreement with the United States.

“The Israelis will be themselves evaluating the deportees, reviewing them one by one,” he said. “And that could result in a phased return of significant numbers in the next period of time--and that certainly could have a positive effect.”

His remark was the Clinton Administration’s first public suggestion that it wants Israel to allow “significant numbers” of the deportees to return as soon as possible.

A U.S. official said Christopher did not intend to put public pressure on Israel to speed up the deportees’ return--but that appeared to be the likely effect.

There was no immediate reaction from Israel, where Rabin was criticized by conservative members of Parliament for the earlier plan. Christopher is to arrive in Jerusalem on Monday for two days of talks.

Christopher said he hopes that the Palestinians will agree to the idea. “If they were to accept a phased return of the deportees within the terms of the five-point agreement reached with the Israelis, that would certainly be a positive sign,” he said.

King Hussein indicated, without being explicit, that he too hopes the compromise can work.

“I hope and pray that . . . we will see conditions ripe for resumption of talks on all levels,” the king said. “We feel very strongly that there should not be much of a break. We should not let time lapse.”

The monarch said the issue of the deportees is still “an obstacle” to the talks, but he avoided reiterating the formal position of Arab governments that the talks cannot resume until all the deportees have returned.

A spokesman for the deportees, Abdul Aziz Rantisi, repeated that position Friday, saying the exiles will accept nothing short of their complete and immediate return.

U.S. officials said that, in private, all the Arab participants in the negotiations have said they are willing to consider a compromise solution to the deportee issue.

None of the Arabs are particularly fond of Hamas, which opposes the talks entirely and condemns Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat as too moderate.

But when Israel summarily deported the Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, the “mainstream” Palestinian leadership had little choice but to protest, and the Arab governments had little choice but to fall in line.

Some U.S. and Arab officials say they hope a more flexible Israeli attitude will allow the PLO and the Palestinian negotiators to detach themselves from Hamas.

“It would be a good thing for everyone if Hamas were less influential,” one U.S. official said.

Christopher said he hopes his efforts will result in an early resumption of the talks.

“I continue to be optimistic that the parties will recognize that . . . the most important step will be to reconvene the peace talks without any substantial delay,” he said. “This is a historic opportunity. It may be, in some respects, a one-time opportunity. I think that the parties will come, I hope, to a realization of that in the near future.”

He praised King Hussein as a longtime friend of the United States, but he sidestepped the question of whether the Clinton Administration plans to press Congress to restore $30 million in aid to Jordan that was cut off after the king refused to support the United States in the 1991 Persian Gulf War with Iraq.

“We intend to be consulting with Congress on that issue in the near future based upon all the developments that are taking place in the region,” Christopher said.

The secretary of state faces a sterner test for his peace proposals today from Syrian President Hafez Assad, the most powerful and most implacable Arab leader in the Mideast talks.

Christopher arrived in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Saturday evening to prepare for his first meeting with Assad, who has been known to subject visitors to long lectures on Arab history and Western faithlessness. When Secretary of State James A. Baker III was negotiating for Assad’s agreement to start the peace talks, officials noted, one of their meetings lasted more than nine hours without a break.