PLO Gets Warning From Rabin : Mideast: The Israeli prime minister accuses Arafat of backing off from autonomy accord. He also threatens to withdraw concessions if Palestinian team forces new talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, increasing pressure on the Palestine Liberation Organization to compromise on terms for Palestinian self-government, warned Friday that if the PLO reopened the negotiations, everything would be on the table and previous Israeli concessions would be withdrawn.

Rabin said that any PLO rejection of the package of compromises worked out during intensive talks this week in Cairo would return the negotiations on implementation of the autonomy agreement to their starting point.

“As long as there is no approval from (PLO headquarters in) Tunis for the paper, which we view as a summing-up (of understandings), there is no approval from Jerusalem,” Rabin said. “And if there will be no approval from Tunis, everything we say in the paper will be open to renewed examination.”

Rabin said in press interviews Friday that he is content to wait and will not be rushed into making further concessions out of fear that the current impasse in negotiations amounts to a deeper crisis.

“I would not suggest that anyone stand by with a stopwatch or even a calendar to count the days or even weeks,” Rabin told the popular Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot when asked how long it might take to reach an agreement. “Israel can continue with the existing reality--we are ruling the (occupied) territories.”

Saying that he had received a message from PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat by fax Friday, Rabin accused Arafat of trying to back away from the agreement reached by Israeli and PLO negotiators in Cairo.

“The remarks of the chairman are far from anything that was discussed and agreed,” Rabin told British journalists.

Israel maintains that the negotiators for the two sides reached a series of basic compromises in lengthy negotiations this week in Cairo but that the PLO is now reneging in hopes of more concessions. The Palestinians assert that the draft joint statement reflected Israeli proposals and that, in any event, the agreement was to refer it to Tunis and Jerusalem for review and comment.

“To start now to argue about what was reached--and some of the Palestinians try to present the paper as an Israeli proposal--is total nonsense,” Rabin said.

Two faxes from the PLO, one from Arafat on Friday and the other from a top negotiator Thursday, reportedly put forward fundamental changes on three of the four points that have delayed the beginning of an Israeli troop withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho, originally scheduled for Dec. 13.

The three still-contentious issues and the objections raised by the PLO:

* Control--Israeli, Palestinian or joint--of border crossings from Egypt into the Gaza Strip and from Jordan into the West Bank.

The PLO wants separate border control points to check everyone entering and leaving its self-rule areas, with only “invisible” Israeli monitoring by cameras and electronic sensors.

It rejected an Israeli proposal for one border terminal with an Israeli window and a Palestinian window separated by a glass partition, saying that those arrangements would give Israeli officials the right to inspect--and reject--Palestinian travelers before Palestinian officials even see them.

* The size of the autonomous Jericho area. Israel has offered an area of about 22 square miles running north, south and west of the town of Jericho; the PLO wants a larger area that would be linked to bridges across the Jordan River.

* Security for the 5,000 Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip. The PLO said the area connecting Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip should not exceed nine square miles.

The PLO reportedly raised no objections on a fourth issue--continued Israeli military deployments along the frontiers between Gaza and Egypt and Jericho and Jordan.

Israeli officials dismissed as “unreasonable” the suggested changes, and Rabin indicated that he would take his time in replying to Arafat’s message.

Israel sees the Palestinian demands for control of border crossings, a presence on the international frontiers and a large area around Jericho as an attempt to turn the autonomous region into a state. Palestinians feel that Israel is unable to move from the mentality of an occupier to that of a peaceful neighbor.

Rabin said that Israel needs to maintain control of the crossings to protect its security and to prevent an influx of Palestinian refugees. “For me, the main issues on the crossings are security checks of people, checks of baggage and prevention of mass entrance of Palestinians who do not reside in the territories,” he told Yediot.

But Rabin stressed his underlying confidence that a settlement will be reached and the accord on self-government will go into effect, though perhaps later than the timetable envisioned in the basic pact.

“I am sure in the long run, agreement will be reached and the Declaration of Principles will be implemented,” he said. “Time is of great importance, but the substance of the agreement about phase No. 1, ‘Gaza-Jericho First,’ is the key for the future.

“We will not implement anything before an agreement satisfactory to the two sides will be reached and signed.”

Israel and the PLO agreed in Cairo to continue talks at the working level next week at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Taba, with a meeting of senior officials possible in Cairo late in the week.

Further confirmation came, meanwhile, of exploratory talks between Israeli and Syrian political scientists and military specialists on formulas that would ensure Israeli security following troop pullbacks in the Golan Heights, and spelling out what kind of relationship the two countries would then have.

Initiated by the Search for Common Ground, a private Washington-based group, these talks apparently have been used by both countries as a way to get formal peace negotiations moving.

Gad Ben-Ari, a Rabin spokesman, said that it was not clear what significance the private discussions would have. In Damascus, a Syrian government spokesman denied reports of secret talks between Israeli and Syrian “officials,” leaving open the possibility that the private meetings had been authorized.

Yossi Olmert, a former Israeli government official and a specialist on Syria, said the unofficial meetings took place between May and October in Switzerland, Germany, Turkey and Norway and that a working paper was developed outlining steps in a pullback in the Golan Heights.

Olmert, a former Israeli negotiator at Arab-Israeli peace talks in Washington, said the Syrians showed more flexibility regarding Israeli withdrawal and the status of Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights than they had in formal negotiations.

He would not elaborate on the proposals, calling them only “trial balloons, but very specific trial balloons because the questions discussed were the same as those by the decision-makers.”

Israel captured the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau on its northeastern border, from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War and effectively annexed it in 1981. Syria, Israel’s strongest Arab adversary, wants the territory back as a condition for making peace.