Rabin Rips U.S. Peace Talks Role : Mideast: The Israeli leader accuses America of making concessions to Arabs. Christopher warns both sides that Washington could end its mediation efforts.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, all but rejecting U.S. mediation in the deadlocked negotiations with the Palestinians, denounced the Clinton Administration on Sunday for reneging on commitments to Israel in its latest proposals on terms for Palestinian self-government.

In an attack on U.S. peacemaking efforts unprecedented for him, Rabin declared that “as a matter of principle” Israel will not accept U.S. compromise proposals if they involve concessions to the Arabs.

“The Palestinians attacked the first paper,” Rabin said of U.S. proposals for a declaration of principles laying the basis for Palestinian self-government. “The fact that the Americans responded and changed (their paper) even here and there--as a matter of principle we could not and will not tolerate such a development.

“The meaning,” he said, “is that every American (position) paper will be subjected to an attack and that it will be changed.”

Rabin’s declaration appeared to leave little scope for U.S. mediation, although he stopped short of telling Washington to pull out entirely. To Western diplomats, he seemed intent on making the Palestinians understand that they have to negotiate with Israel and not with the United States.

“Washington might remain the venue for the talks,” a European ambassador said, assessing Rabin’s comments, “but the American role is, in this version of Rabin’s at least, not much more than master of ceremonies.

“Rabin obviously did not like the direction in which the Americans were pushing him in this draft declaration, and he disliked even more the fact that he was being pushed.”

The Palestinians had been just as vehement Saturday in telling Secretary of State Warren Christopher that the latest U.S. draft is unacceptable to them because it does not define the territorial basis for autonomy and postponed until subsequent negotiations the future of Jerusalem, an extremely sensitive but crucial issue for both sides.

Christopher, in response, warned both Israel and the Palestinians on Sunday that unless there is progress, the United States might reduce or even halt its mediation efforts in the peace talks.

“If the parties don’t want our assistance, if they really don’t want us to play this role, of course we will not impose ourselves,” Christopher said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

His comments should be taken as “a bit of warning,” Christopher added, “because there are many things that President Clinton has to do and that I have to do. We want to be helpful if we can, but they have to want peace as well. At the present time, I think they continue to want us to play this role.”

Rabin, clearly frustrated with his government’s inability to reach an agreement on Palestinian autonomy, a goal that he had set last July for his first year back in office, charged that the negotiating process was weighted against Israel.

The negotiations that Israel conducts simultaneously in Washington with the Palestinians, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon give the Arabs greater leverage, Rabin argued, by allowing them to coordinate their strategy and to make progress in one set of talks dependent on progress in the others.

“They come, all of them, at the same time to the same place for the same period,” he told a press conference on his return from a trip to France and the Netherlands.

“I believe there still is in the context of that format a possibility to negotiate on a bilateral basis,” Rabin added, welcoming Christopher’s dispatch of Dennis Ross, the U.S. coordinator of the Mideast negotiations, to the region this week in an effort to break the prolonged stalemate.

Rabin later dismissed, however, a suggestion from dovish ministers at the weekly Cabinet meeting that Israel try to end the deadlock with the Palestinians by negotiating directly with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“The negotiations have come to a deadlock, and to do something about it we should talk with the PLO,” said Environment Minister Yossi Sarid of the leftist Meretz Party, a partner in Rabin’s coalition government.

Shulamit Aloni, another Meretz minister, went further, urging that Israel almost immediately hand over administration of the occupied Gaza Strip to the PLO as the first step toward Palestinian autonomy.

“We start with ‘Gaza first’--on this there is a consensus,” Aloni said. “If you don’t want to leave it to Hamas (the radical Islamic fundamentalists), then leave it to ‘the master of the house.’ ”

The Meretz ministers were joined by several ministers from Rabin’s Labor Party--a further reflection of Israeli frustration at the deadlock in the negotiations with the Palestinians--and the Cabinet was reported evenly divided on talking with the PLO.

“It’s not enough to talk with leaders of the (occupied) territories,” said Housing Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, a retired general, Labor stalwart and Rabin confidant. “We need to talk with the PLO and (PLO Chairman Yasser) Arafat.”

But Rabin told the Cabinet that the question of whom Israel negotiates with is procedural and the Washington talks have already moved into substance.

Sarid retorted after the Cabinet meeting: “The question of whom we’re speaking with is an essential question, related to the content of the negotiations. Yasser Arafat, it turns out, is the only boss of the Palestinian side of the negotiations, and if (we) don’t talk with him, there is no reason to talk at all.”

Further evidence of the serious tensions within the Rabin government came in the angry denunciation of a prominent American Jewish lobbyist by the deputy foreign minister, Yossi Beilin. In a Washington Jewish newspaper last week, the lobbyist had described Beilin as “a little slime ball” for his dovish attitudes.

Beilin, who interprets the Rabin government’s “land-for-peace” commitment far more liberally than others, was accused of betraying the Jewish people by Harvey Friedman, vice president of the influential American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“The statements by Harvey Friedman during his visit (in June) were simply astonishing,” Beilin said in a radio interview. “For instance, he said what we needed to do was to tell the Palestinians that they have 22 (other Arab) states and they have to leave the Land of Israel.”

Friedman, who was dismissed as a vice president of the organization Thursday, did not represent either the views of the Israeli public or of the “moderate, liberal, pragmatic” majority of American Jews, Beilin said in a radio interview.

“The firing of Harvey Friedman came against a much graver background--the transformation of AIPAC in recent years into a right-wing Jewish organization,” Beilin added.

The group’s executive director, Thomas Dine, had resigned earlier after being quoted in a book as saying some American Jews thought of ultra-Orthodox Jews as “smelly,” and the former president had been forced out after boasting that the organization would control Mideast policy during the Clinton Administration, even to the point of naming officials in charge of it.