Middle East Maneuvering for Position

By George Russell

"There are a lot of smoke signals going up in a variety of capitals. But we're not sure what they all mean yet." That observation from a U.S. diplomat pretty much summed up the Reagan Administration's attitude of hopeful befuddlement as officials in Washington last week strove to track the latest twists in the convoluted Middle East peace process. The puzzlement was understandable. A promising flurry of diplomatic interchanges two weeks ago among Israel, Jordan and Egypt had created a tentative sense of optimism. But by last week the frustration was edging back as Jerusalem and Amman maneuvered and tacked. Warned Richard Murphy, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, before a congressional subcommittee in Washington: "The window of opportunity is fast slipping away."

Perhaps, perhaps not. In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres emerged with a slightly strengthened political hand from a bout of squabbling that enveloped his national unity government. By an 86-to-6 vote of the Knesset, Peres easily survived a no-confidence motion brought by Tehiya, a tiny right-wing splinter party. The motion was intended to force Peres to withdraw an offer that he had made a week earlier before the United Nations General Assembly. The Israeli leader told the U.N. that Israel might concede a role in the peace process to a vaguely defined "international forum" as an inducement for Jordan's King Hussein to begin face-to-face peace negotiations. As a result of his domestic victory, Peres is increasingly confident that the moment for peace talks is virtually at hand. Says a Peres aide: "There's really an obsessive focus now on how to get to the peace table."

In the Jordanian capital of Amman, two days of closed-door discussions between supposed peace partners yielded far more ambiguous conclusions. At their first meeting since the Achille Lauro hijacking, King Hussein and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, hammered out at least a temporary continuance of their Feb. 11 agreement to reach a negotiated settlement with Israel. The two thereby blunted Israeli hopes that the P.L.O. might be squeezed out of the peace negotiations.

Hussein extracted no promise from Arafat that the P.L.O. would forswear the use of violence against Israel. Nor did the monarch win a formal admission from the organization that it would recognize Israel's right to exist. However, in an interview with TIME Middle East Bureau Chief Dean Fischer after the meeting, Hussein said that he had given Arafat only a limited amount of time to provide that admission. Said the King: "There is no specific period of time, but we expect an answer in the near future . . . I believe that both the Jordanian and Palestinian sides have a clearer picture of where we stand."

The Reagan Administration last week stood largely on the sidelines. The Administration's major Middle East initiative was to appoint a new special envoy for the peace process, to be stationed permanently in the region. The superdiplomat: Wat Cluverius, 50, a respected Middle East expert and former U.S. consul general in East Jerusalem. Cluverius will handle chores previously assigned to Assistant Secretary of State Murphy, who has shuttled between Washington and the Middle East since February.

Prime Minister Peres welcomed that small U.S. gesture as yet another indication that his cherished goal of direct peace talks with Hussein was on track. The Labor Party leader returned to Jerusalem after an eleven-day visit to New York, Washington and Western Europe, visibly buoyed by the Jordanian monarch's response to his Oct. 22 U.N. speech, in which Peres promised to go to Amman or "any location" to hold direct peace talks. Hussein had called the Israeli offer "a positive one in its spirit."

In fact, Peres and Hussein held at least one summit meeting during the two weeks before the Israeli leader's U.S. trip. At that time, Peres surely made clear Israel's continuing firm opposition to P.L.O. involvement in the peace negotiations. In his interview with TIME last week, Hussein tacitly denied, however, that such a meeting had occurred.

As if to underscore Jerusalem's position one more time, Israeli jets streaked across eastern Lebanon on an anti-P.L.O. mission early last week. The fighters blasted P.L.O. targets that Israeli officials termed "terrorist bases" near the town of Bar Elias in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley. The bases apparently belonged to the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a dissident faction of the P.L.O. The raid came only a day before Hussein's meeting with Arafat.

As the jets carried out their mission, Peres had adversaries of a different kind to confront at his regular Sunday Cabinet meeting: hard-line members of the Likud bloc, the other major partner in his national unity government. Likud Cabinet members, led by Deputy Prime Minister David Levy and Minister for Industry and Trade Ariel Sharon, pounced on Peres. They charged that his U.N. speech violated a Labor-Likud policy that opposes an international Middle East peace conference. Unless Peres offered "clarifications," Levy and Sharon threatened that Likud would bolt the government. Likud Leader and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Minister Without Portfolio Moshe Arens kept silent.

During the eight-hour session, Peres was adamant that the U.N. speech violated no such policy. On Monday in the Knesset, he railed against anyone who would "pile obstacles on the road to the peace process." Legislators apparently were impressed. By a 68-to-10 vote of the 120-member chamber, they endorsed a resolution in support of Peres' U.N. speech before voting down the Tehiya no-confidence motion.

The truth is that Peres is not at all averse to a government split-up, under the right circumstances. Encouraged by his peace efforts and an apparent upturn in the ravaged Israeli economy, the Labor leader is increasingly eager to face elections, especially since recent polls show his party well ahead of Likud, 38% to 24%. Whether or not there is a genuine start to peace talks between Israel and Jordan in the next few weeks or months, Peres will be sorely tempted to find a way to encourage his coalition partner to topple the government and force elections. Otherwise, under the national unity coalition agreement, he must turn over the Prime Minister's job to Shamir in October. But in the meantime, Peres plans to do nothing that would divert him from nailing down the talks with Hussein.

Any expectations that Hussein would cast the P.L.O. and Arafat into outer darkness at the Amman meeting were soon doomed to disappointment. Even so, the P.L.O. leader was uneasy as he arrived from Baghdad on Monday for his session at Hussein's Al Nadwa Palace. He had reason for anxiety. Hussein was infuriated by the Achille Lauro hijacking. The King was even more irked by the collapse of an Oct. 14 meeting in London between British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe and two P.L.O. representatives, one of whom scuttled the session by refusing to acknowledge Israel's right to exist.

Evidently fearing the kind of daring U.S. air interception that the Achille Lauro hijackers encountered, Arafat made the 500-mile journey from Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, to Amman by automobile. Seven top P.L.O. leaders accompanied him to the palace for the 2 1/2-hour meeting with Hussein. The ! next day Arafat held a three-hour session with Jordanian Prime Minister Zaid al Rifa'i. Later, however, the P.L.O. leader claimed that Hussein was not upset in their meeting. Said he: "Jordanian-Palestinian relations are too strong to be affected by an event here or an event there."

What emerged from the Hussein-Arafat talks were two specific assurances: 1) that Arafat would harmonize any further diplomatic moves, like the failed London meeting, with Jordan and with other P.L.O. officials through a joint coordinating committee; and 2) that Arafat would do everything possible to prevent a repeat of the Achille Lauro hijacking. In a move that promised to be more show than substance, the P.L.O. also agreed to set up a committee of inquiry to investigate the cruise-liner tragedy, including the role of the notorious Abul Abbas, accused by Israel of masterminding that operation.

But at the same time, Arafat vehemently rejected the idea of refraining from acts of violence, specifically against Israeli military targets. As he told TIME, "Why? What for? In a package deal, we can think of it. Armed struggle is one of the means of any people who are facing occupation. We are against any operation against any civilian."

After his meeting with Hussein, Arafat paid a courtesy call on the Soviet ambassador in Amman. As it happened, less than 24 hours later Moscow announced that it had received good news about its own brush with the vagaries of Middle Eastern terror. Three Soviet diplomats kidnaped in Beirut on Sept. 30 had been released in that city, 28 days after the body of a fourth Soviet kidnap victim, Consular Secretary Arkadi Katkov, was found with a bullet through the head. The P.L.O. had nothing to do with the Soviet kidnapings, for which the hitherto unknown Islamic Liberation Organization claimed responsibility.

The outcome of Arafat's meetings suggests that the peace process still has a way to go before the kinds of talks that Peres envisages take place. "I don't see any dramatic turning point," said Israeli Foreign Minister Shamir. "The same obstacles still exist." Yes, but as Hussein told TIME, "we are continuing to explore all possibilities."

With reporting by Scott MacLeod/Amman and Robert Slater/ Jerusalem