U.S. Warning Arabs That Time Is Right to Make a Deal

WASHINGTON — With Middle East peace talks set to resume today, the Bush Administration is warning Arab delegations that they have only a short time to capitalize on Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s election mandate to make a deal.

Less directly, but unmistakably, Administration officials also are reminding the Arabs that unless President Bush confounds the polls and wins the November election, they stand to lose the American mediator most of them have come to regard as the most evenhanded in years, Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

“We’ve been having some interesting conversations with the Palestinians,” a senior White House official said. “We’re telling them that (Israel) is putting serious things on the table and you’re not going to have a negotiation unless you put serious things on the table.”

From Bush’s standpoint, the urgency is clear: Progress in the talks clearly would give the President’s reelection bid an important boost. From the standpoint of the delegations, Israeli and Arab, the next week may be the last chance to lock in progress before the U.S. election, which could result in a change in the ground rules.

One top Palestinian official said that most Arab delegates would like to help Bush but will not change their deliberate negotiating style to do so.

“The Arabs, sometimes for the wrong reasons, always prefer a Republican President,” the Palestinian said.

But the official disputed the Administration view that Rabin’s new government has made a significant proposal. He said the plan for Palestinian self-government that Israeli negotiators unveiled just before the talks recessed 10 days ago was not as generous as the one that Rabin’s Labor Party had proposed in its campaign for Israel’s June elections.

As Israeli negotiators were leaving Jerusalem on Saturday, the emphasis was on Rabin’s willingness to consider at least a partial return of the Golan Heights to Syria. Both Israeli and U.S. officials said that the chances for progress in the Israel-Syria talks are better than they have ever been.

The White House official said this marks a significant “psychological threshold” that has been crossed in the Israel-Syria talks. He predicted that there will be a “feedback effect” on Israel’s separate negotiations with the Palestinians. But it is not at all clear whether these developments will be enough to produce results before the U.S. election.

“The Arabs have genuinely liked what Bush and Baker have done on the peace process,” said William B. Quandt, a former National Security Council expert on the Middle East. “They see an ongoing process that on the whole has support in the Arab world. And they have been alarmed by some of (Democratic candidate Bill) Clinton’s pro-Israeli rhetoric.

“This should lead them to put their best foot forward while Bush and Baker are still paying attention,” Quandt, now a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, added.

If Clinton wins in November, it will likely mean a delay in the peace process. The new Administration will need time to solidify its approach to the negotiations, even though the Democratic nominee has pledged, if elected, to take up where Bush leaves off.

But Arab and Israeli negotiators say it is not realistic to expect such continuity. Even if Bush wins, these negotiators say, there will be a loss of momentum unless Baker returns to the State Department.

The distraction of the U.S. election comes at a critical juncture in the talks. Administration officials, Arab and Israeli delegates and outside experts all agree that the atmosphere in this round of talks is far more conducive to progress than it has been at any time since the Madrid peace conference last October. But no one expects a dramatic breakthrough.

“I don’t see them coming to an agreement on their own,” Quandt said. “They need an active mediator, the kind of role that Baker could play if he was not otherwise engaged. It will take cajoling and badgering, the sort of thing that Baker did to get them to the table in the first place.”