PLO to Seek U.S. Help in Pressuring Israelis : Mideast: Palestinians want curbs on Jewish settlers before talks resume. Jerusalem also vies for support.

As Israel sought U.S. assistance in preserving advances made so far in negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization and with its Arab neighbors, PLO officials said Monday that they will probably send a delegation to Washington to push for more curbs on Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied territories as a prelude to resuming stalled peace talks.

Concluding two days of crisis talks after last week’s massacre of 48 Palestinians in a Hebron mosque, the PLO Executive Committee was preparing to name a small group of envoys to meet with Clinton Administration officials to try to win support for further security controls on Israeli settlers.

The PLO said it will also ask the United States to press for international protection forces in the occupied territories and a full investigation, under international auspices, of the Israeli army’s role in the attack and its aftermath.

Syria, Jordan and Lebanon have announced that they are also pulling out of the peace talks in response to the massacre, the worst incident of violence in Israel’s 27-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“They have to understand the whole peace process has lost its credibility,” PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat said in an interview early today. “We are not asking for the moon. From the beginning, we have only been asking for the accurate and honest implementation of the Declaration of Principles we signed in September.”

Arafat said he will make a decision on the delegation to Washington after meeting today with a special envoy dispatched by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Arafat said that the Palestinians expect the Americans to exert the necessary pressure on Israel to make it possible to resume the peace talks.

Yasser Abed-Rabbo, head of the PLO information department, warned that “either we get guarantees or the Palestinian people will not back anymore the peace process.”

In Israel, officials also warned they will not make major concessions out of a sense of guilt for the massacre in Hebron.

Although senior Israeli officials said they had anticipated that the PLO and the other Arabs would suspend the talks to protest the massacre at a West Bank mosque last week by an Israeli settler, they said they were not confident of Israel’s ability to restart them without U.S. mediation.

“We, directly, would have a hard time persuading the Syrians and the Lebanese to return to the talks,” Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin said. “And concerning the PLO, this would not be easy, not at all. The next step should be the intervention of the Americans.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said the United States is ready to discuss the tattered peace process with PLO envoys. But he gave no indication that the Administration will pressure Israel into new concessions to meet the Palestinians’ demands.

McCurry said the PLO’s key demand for international observers to protect Palestinian civilians from Israeli settlers could be met by modifying a provision--originally intended to send in international economic advisers--of the agreement Israel and the PLO signed in Washington last September. But he made it clear that the United States will not pressure Israel to accept that interpretation of the pact.

Israel’s plea for U.S. intervention overrides its strong preference previously for direct negotiations with the PLO and other Arabs. Western diplomats suggested that it reflected serious concern by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that the gains so arduously won in recent months might be lost as a result of the massacre.

Speaking to the Israeli Parliament on Monday, Rabin pledged to “continue the peacemaking.. . . We will accelerate the talks, the contacts and the negotiations, and even if it takes time, peace will come.”

Addressing Palestinians, Rabin said: “We are near to the conclusion of the next stage in the negotiations for peace. We already see the finish line. A little more effort, a little more readiness, a little more goodwill by you, the Palestinians, and by us, and we will be victorious. We have no other path, only that of peace. There is nothing without it.”

But Rabin ruled out major concessions in response to the massacre or to get the talks restarted. “The abominable murder in Hebron and the feeling of loss and sorrow will not change our fundamental positions regarding the security of Israel and its citizens, including the Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip,” he said.

But in discussions with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Rabin relented on the question of the international peacekeeping force demanded by the PLO, according to Israeli officials; he would accept such a contingent if it was agreed to in negotiations on Palestinian self-government. Israel would continue to reject an international force sent as a result of a U.N. resolution, they said.

Many PLO officials are calling for an end to the “Gaza-Jericho first” agreement signed in September calling for an interim period of self-rule in two enclaves of the occupied territories. But Arafat has clearly been looking for a realistic set of demands that would allow the negotiations, which had been near fruition before the massacre, to get back on track.

Israel’s pledge over the weekend to crack down on extremist settlers, arresting their leaders and disarming their most dangerous elements, has met with an unwelcome reception in Tunis, where PLO officials believe the measure will do nothing to protect Palestinians from the large number of armed settlers who do not belong to those groups.

“I was expecting yesterday they would have something from the (Israeli) Cabinet to cool down the situation,” Arafat said. “But as we say in Arabic, ‘What came down from the mountain? A mouse.’ ”

Abed-Rabbo emphasized that the demand for security “is not an offer” but a bottom line. “This is not a bargaining question. The safety of every single Palestinian is not a question of bargaining or negotiation.” He said that without these guarantees, “this is something that might motivate us to ask our people to carry weapons in order to protect themselves.”

PLO officials said the envoys would not meet with Israeli officials but would meet with the Administration “to discuss requirements for resumption of the peace talks.”

Abed-Rabbo said the PLO is delaying adoption of a final strategy until it evaluates the Security Council response to the weekend attack. The council continued to deliberate on a possible resolution on the massacre late Monday.

Murphy reported from Tunis and Parks from Jerusalem. Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.