Rabin, Arafat Delay Deadline on Self-Rule : Mideast: Move apparently stalls Israeli withdrawal from territories. Officials will consult for 10 more days.

Dimming hopes that Israeli troops will begin their pullback today from the Gaza Strip and Jericho, Israeli and Palestinian officials agreed Sunday to consult for another 10 days before trying to reach a final accord on Palestinian self-government.

Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, who had long proclaimed that the pullout must begin on time in order to maintain the credibility of the peace process, spoke dispiritedly but expressed hope that the delay would not spark more violence in the occupied territories.

“From the beginning, we mentioned that the quicker we implement the (agreement), there will be more opportunity to over-jump all the obstacles, including the violence,” Arafat said.

But he and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, meeting in Cairo in an eleventh-hour attempt to salvage the accord, declared their commitment to the peace process and said they believe that an agreement can be reached within the next 10 days.

“No doubt Mr. Arafat and myself understand very clearly the kind of responsibility we have taken on ourselves in signing the Declaration of Principles on the 13th of September, and I believe this kind of responsibility in the long run, and hopefully the short run, will bring us to reach an agreement,” Rabin said. “We need a little more time, and 10 days, bearing in mind the 100 years of Palestinian-Jewish conflict, it’s not too long.”

The two leaders said their committee on economic issues will meet again today in Paris, and a subcommittee on transfer of civil administration powers will continue its talks in the Egyptian town of El Arish.

Egyptian officials said the Palestinian and Israeli leaders in the meantime will consult their respective leaderships and hold informal contacts over the next 10 days in an attempt to bridge the gap that over the last three months has prevented a final accord on launching Palestinian autonomy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.

“There’s still hope and there’s still time to work, and the possibility is there that the two parties will achieve an agreement within the 10 days,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Amir Moussa said. “This is an extension of time for both of them to coordinate and consult and then to sit down again and to continue to negotiate.”

Rabin said he is sure that the additional negotiating time will not delay the April 13 target date for completing Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho as envisioned in the original Declaration of Principles.

“I don’t see any reason why if in 10 days from now we reach an agreement on those issues which we have not yet succeeded to reach an understanding, there will be any difficulty in achievement in the time frame that was allotted,” the Israeli prime minister said. “We knew from the beginning . . . that there would be need for patience, coolness and compromises.”

Sunday’s meeting was the only hope for achieving an on-schedule commencement of troop withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho, after Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams found themselves badly divided on issues of security around Jewish settlements in Gaza, control of international border crossings into Egypt and Jordan and the size of the area around Jericho to be transferred to Palestinian control.

Now, it appears that the only concrete movements toward implementation in the next several days are likely to be largely symbolic.

Egyptian news reports said Israel could begin withdrawing troops from several military bases in the Gaza Strip and will also likely release over the next several days an estimated 1,200 Palestinian detainees, a small number of the 9,500 prisoners whose release the Palestinians are seeking.

In another symbolic move, Palestinians plan today to dispatch 40 newly trained security guards from Jordan into the West Bank, part of a growing Palestinian security force that is expected to assume law enforcement responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza once Israeli troops withdraw.

Rabin refused to comment on any prisoner releases and also declined to say why he believed that the two sides could achieve new progress over the next 10 days.

“I have some reasons. I will not explain them,” he said.

Israel Radio reported that Rabin went to Cairo prepared to give some ground on one of the most divisive issues, the size of the district of Jericho to be transferred to Palestinian self-rule.

The Israelis have been offering only the town of Jericho itself and surrounding refugee camps, about 27 square kilometers, compared to the 360-square-kilometer district of Jericho demanded by the PLO.

Moussa said there had been some narrowing of the issues in that the two sides “agreed on certain points” and outlined others “that have to be re-discussed.”

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was also upbeat, saying the next 10 days will give both sides time for “consultations” on issues outlined during the summit.

“Yasser Arafat with the (PLO) Executive Committee will discuss all the points, reach a conclusion. It will take some days, then they are going to meet again here in Egypt until they reach a fair conclusion,” Mubarak said. He said the two leaders “acted very well, very decently, very coolly. It gave me a kind of good impression that they are going to reach something within that time.”

Rabin and Arafat each held private talks early Sunday with Mubarak, then sat down together with Mubarak for about half an hour before breaking into an unexpected one-on-one session that lasted about an hour and 15 minutes.

They were then joined by their delegations and talked for about three-quarters of an hour more.

In their official announcements, they emphasized that both sides remain committed to the Declaration of Principles signed in September and to continuing all efforts to reach an accord on its implementation.

The next meeting is scheduled within 10 days--”It might be nine or 11 days,” Rabin said--and it is again to be held in Egypt.

The Israeli prime minister said the difficulties and delay are a natural function of attempting to reach an accord that will by nature involve sharing territory.

“What we are trying to achieve is not like when we signed a peace treaty with a neighboring Arab country. When we signed a peace treaty with Egypt, we knew that there is a line, on one side Egypt, on the other side Israel,” he said.

“In the creation of the interim self-government arrangement of the Palestinians, we tried to create peaceful coexistence between two entities that are interwoven in the territories, crisscross one another, and it’s much more complicated.”

* SUPPORT EBBS: Impatience mounts as Mideast peace talks stall. A15