Rabin Backs Away From Timetable for Troop Withdrawal : Mideast: Premier refuses even a symbolic pullback from occupied territories. He says security concerns come first.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, insisting that Israel’s terms for its own security be met as a condition for Palestinian self-government, backed away Monday from the timetable for withdrawing Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“There are no sacred dates,” Rabin said, dismissing Israel’s failure to begin its withdrawal Monday from Gaza as planned. “Rather, each date depends on reaching an agreement.”

Refusing to make even a symbolic pullback to honor the agreement reached three months ago with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Rabin sought both to reassure Israelis apprehensive about the security of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to intensify the pressure on PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to accept Israel’s terms.

“It is clear to me today that there are disagreements in areas that are, in my opinion, central to our needs for achieving security, the security that is necessary in order to implement the Gaza-Jericho First (autonomy) agreement,” Rabin said.

“If there is no solution that will answer our security problems as I see them,” he said in a prime-time television interview, “then we will have to continue negotiating. . . .

“We very much want to see up the implementation--we have no interest in delaying it--but we will not give up our security principles.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said that negotiations with the PLO had consequently reached “a serious crisis,” agreeing with Rabin’s insistence on Israeli control of the autonomous region’s borders with Egypt and Jordan to prevent an influx of weapons and unauthorized forces that could threaten Israel’s security.

Arafat, who had met with Rabin in Cairo on Sunday but failed to settle their differences on the autonomy plan, told a news conference in The Hague, “Definitely there are serious problems--otherwise, why the delay for 10 days?”

Even those 10 days, meant to give Israeli and Palestinian negotiators time to resolve key disputes, could easily lengthen, Rabin said in briefing Israeli diplomatic correspondents, making it plain that he did not feel bound by any timetable and will move ahead only with assurance of Israeli security.

“Whoever thinks that in the next 10 days an agreement will be concluded between Israel and the PLO doesn’t know what is being talked about,” the correspondents quoted Rabin as saying. “In those 10 days, perhaps matters of principle will be completed. Afterward it will be necessary to formulate (a detailed) agreement.”

But Arafat, who was in The Hague for talks with Dutch officials, warned that further delays would damage chances of overall peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and between Israelis and their other Arab neighbors.

The most difficult of the outstanding issues, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources, is control of the borders with Egypt and Jordan. Rabin and Arafat were also far apart on protection for the 4,500 Jewish settlers living in the Gaza Strip. Another unresolved issue is the size of the Jericho district, which Israel will hand over to the PLO.

Although Israeli and PLO representatives are expected to meet secretly in Europe over the next week on the security questions, the issues are so sensitive and the differences so great, according to sources familiar with the negotiations, that only Rabin and Arafat can resolve them.

Other delegations will meet in Paris to discuss economic cooperation and in the Egyptian resort town of El Arish to plan Palestinian takeover of the military government that has administered Gaza and the West Bank through 26 years of Israeli occupation.

According to sources familiar with the Arafat-Rabin talks in Cairo on Sunday, there has been no progress on any issue despite mediation efforts by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The meeting’s value lay primarily in helping the two sides understand each other’s positions and in bringing Arafat and Rabin alone together, the sources said.

The 10-day deadline was intended to give each side time to explore new options, according to these sources, but it put “a sword over their heads,” forcing them through threat of public failure to reach an agreement within that time frame.

The Israelis did offer to expand the size of Jericho, but “it wasn’t enough for the Palestinians to go along with,” one source said, asking not to be quoted by name.

After returning from Cairo, Rabin met with his top generals late into the night, and on Monday he convened a surprise Cabinet meeting, outlining his toughened stance and the reasons behind it. He then gave a series of interviews and briefings to explain his approach to Israelis.

Peres and other ministers expressed optimism that the impasse will be resolved; many were even more optimistic after the Cabinet meeting than before.

“It is a serious crisis, to be sure,” Peres said. “But it is not the first, nor is it the last. Negotiations are in a way a chain of crises that you have to overcome.”

Rabin, in fact, is trying to maneuver through a particularly difficult passage. He is committed to the agreement with the PLO, without the option of abandoning it or turning back, but needs to persuade Israelis that he is safeguarding their security.

On Rabin’s orders, not only did Israeli troops remain firmly entrenched in Gaza and Jericho on Monday, but thousands of additional troops also were deployed throughout the occupied territories to contain any protests over the failure to begin the withdrawal.

Although Israeli officials had suggested there might be symbolic moves, such as withdrawal from the Gaza City police headquarters, none materialized Monday.

Times staff writer Kim Murphy in Cairo contributed to this report.