PLO Hopes to Open Secret Channel to Negotiate Directly With Rabin : Israel: It wants to push ideas for Palestinian self-government. Proposals would be sent on to Washington talks.

The Palestine Liberation Organization hopes to develop recent contacts with Israeli officials into a secret but full-fledged channel for direct negotiations with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, members of the Palestinian delegation to the Arab-Israeli peace talks said Monday.

The PLO wants the private channel, which would operate parallel to the Washington-based talks, to advance ideas that might break the stalemate over Palestinian self-government and to discuss the assurances that Israel will need from an independent Palestinian state.

According to Palestinian negotiators, the new mechanism would allow representatives of Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to work out in secret proposals that would then be brought to the full talks--and perhaps be put forward there by the United States in its role as mediator.

Secrecy is essential, the Palestinian negotiators have concluded. Any agreement on Palestinian autonomy that also looks ahead toward independence will carry implicit concessions that are domestically sensitive for Rabin and Arafat alike.

“Rabin’s problem, as we see it, is that he wants to be sure, absolutely sure, about security, so he is always focusing on the end result although insisting that he is discussing the interim stage,” said Azmi Shuebi, a member of both the delegation and the PLO steering committee overseeing the talks with Israel.

“Everyone has his eyes on the second phase--we are clear that we want a Palestinian state--and that makes negotiating the interim period of autonomy very difficult. We feel that if we could provide assurances about the final result, we could then conclude an interim agreement.”

In the Palestinian proposal, the delegations to the Washington talks would continue to work on the autonomy agreement. But “close and trusted” aides of Rabin and Arafat would meet elsewhere, quite possibly in Cairo, to discuss new ideas for those talks and reach basic understandings.

“We do not want to abandon the Madrid formula--the two-phase settlement, the Washington talks, the American mediation,” said another senior Palestinian negotiator, referring to the 1991 Madrid peace conference that launched the Arab-Israeli talks. “But we do not want it to imprison the negotiations, as it is doing now.”

Although Rabin continues to reject a meeting with Arafat, Palestinian delegates are confident that he will be interested in the plan.

Rabin has already opened what has been dubbed the “Christopher channel,” named for Secretary of State Warren Christopher in his role as a go-between in the negotiations between Israel and Syria.

The Palestinians see in Rabin, a close student of former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s secret diplomacy with North Vietnam, a preference for back-channel negotiations for overriding issues. These issues are then put into form by diplomats at the negotiating table.

Rabin needs secrecy, the Palestinians believe, to explore solutions to difficult issues such as the future of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which will be involved in Palestinian autonomy. Agreements could then be put forward as American proposals so that each side could tell its public that it had little say in drafting them.

“Rabin still negotiates with the mentality of a general in that he does not want to yield under pressure,” an adviser to the Palestinian delegation said. “Moreover, he trusts no one but himself to make key decisions.

“Clearly, and we feel he understands this too, we will have to negotiate directly but secretly with Rabin,” said an adviser to the Palestinian delegation. “ . . . That’s the real thrust of our recent contacts.”

Last October, Rabin sought private meetings with Faisal Husseini and Haidar Abdel-Shafi, the chief Palestinian delegates, in an effort to push ahead in the negotiations, but they turned him down to force him to deal with the PLO.

In the past two months, Rabin has allowed three of his ministers to meet with top PLO officials, as well as a wide range of lower-level contacts. And he said last week, “I will not prevent any minister from meeting with PLO figures.”

Breaking Israel’s longstanding ban on negotiations with the PLO, Rabin has now accepted the Palestinian delegates as PLO representatives.

“I think that the negotiations should be conducted with the Palestinian delegation as residents of the (occupied) territories,” he said. “However, the time has come for the public to know the truth as well. Would the Madrid conference have convened without the agreement of the PLO?”

Rabin has been open in his eagerness to move the Palestinian talks ahead. “Rabin has prepared the Israeli public for negotiations with the PLO, and the question really has been reduced to a matter of timing,” said Bassam abu Sharif, a senior Arafat adviser in Tunis. “We expect him to follow up rather soon with additional contacts, and he knows that we are ready.”

In the past, Rabin’s aversion to the PLO stemmed largely from his belief that once the Palestinian negotiating partner came from outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, talks would move from self-government to independence.

If Arafat represents the Palestinians outside the occupied territories, Rabin has reasoned, the PLO will not be able to accept much short of the Palestinians’ right to return to their homes in what is now Israel.

But many Israeli analysts viewed the increased decision-making role won last week by Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem in the negotiations as shifting the balance within the PLO toward their interests.