Delay in Israeli Troop Pullback Is OK, Christopher Says

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, adopting a position that Israel has been advancing for weeks, said Wednesday that it is more important for Israel and the PLO to reach complete agreement on details of Palestinian self-rule than for Israel to begin withdrawing its forces by next Monday’s deadline.

“If the parties . . . decide that they need a few more days to get it right, it’s important to get it right and not to lead to additional problems.” Christopher said after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

That echoed the position of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who maintains that there is nothing sacred about the Dec. 13 target date for the start of Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, even though it is spelled out in the Israel-Palestinian peace accord.

The agreement that Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed Sept. 13 in Washington calls for the Israeli military pullback to start within three months of the signing and to be completed within six months. PLO officials maintain that meeting the deadline should be seen as a test of Israel’s willingness to abide by the agreement.

But the Palestinians have conceded privately that there is no way to prevent delay if negotiators do not complete work by Monday on the definitions and details that were left out of the original pact.

“If the two parties would agree that we need a few more days or whatever period of time to work out some existing problems and definitional precision to the Declaration of Principles, the United States would not have an independent judgment that that was wrong,” Christopher said.

At the same time, both Christopher and Mubarak urged Israel and the PLO to implement the agreement as soon as possible. Using almost identical language, the two said Palestinian self-rule will help to alleviate the violence that has caused bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza in recent weeks.

Christopher said Palestinian autonomy “is the key to bringing an end to the violence, to show people that there is a new reality, that there is improvement there that can take place on the ground (and) in the lives of the people.”

Mubarak, who is credited with helping to persuade the PLO to join the peace process, said, “The more we implement, the less violence we will meet.”

The assertion that Palestinian self-government will stem the violence is far from proved. Since the agreement was signed in September, there has been a wave of killings and other forms of violence in the territories, with Palestinians attacking Israelis and Israelis attacking Palestinians. Both the U.S. and Israeli governments have accused Israeli and Palestinian militants opposed to the peace agreement of fomenting the violence.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin said Israel wants to keep the negotiations short to minimize further violence by foes of the accord.

“We understood that the Palestinian opposition would attempt to prevent implementation by violence, and we didn’t want to expose ourselves to that violence for a longer period,” Beilin said.

The declaration--hammered out with the help of Norwegian diplomats in secret talks in Oslo--failed to address some highly complex and important issues. Negotiators were so eager to complete an agreement that both sides would sign that they swept many matters under the rug.

Times staff writer Michael Parks in Jerusalem contributed to this report.