Trying to Break the Impasse

By Sara C. Medina

MIDDLE EAST Trying to Break the Impasse Reagan expresses frustration, but no one has new ideas

The sun was rising over Washington when, promptly at 7 a.m. last Wednesday, Vice President George Bush convened a special high-level meeting in the White House Situation Room. National Security Adviser William Clark was there, along with CIA Chief William Casey, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Special Envoy Philip Habib, who had been hastily summoned home from his diplomatic shuttle in the Middle East. The purpose of the gathering: to find a way to break the impasse in negotiations to secure the withdrawal of Israeli,. Syrian and Palestine Liberation Organization troops from Lebanon. The mood was somber. "Everyone in the Administration is angry," said a White House aide. "The President himself is as angry as everybody else over here."

If Reagan was losing patience, it was because the failure to negotiate a withdrawal of troops from Lebanon was becoming a major obstacle to the broader Middle East peace initiative he proposed on Sept. 1. According to that plan, the Israeli-occupied West Bank would be linked in a loose confederation to Jordan. Although the officials who met at the White House last week agreed that the U.S. should put additional pressure on Israel to get the stalled talks moving, they apparently decided on little more than what a senior diplomat described as "a renewed U.S. push, coupled with a very strong and very sincere expression of presidential frustration." Added the official: "There are not really new ideas or proposals."

The current impasse is in part the result of an Israeli demand that Jerusalem and Beirut be the sole venues for direct Israeli-Lebanese talks. The Lebanese, who have already made concessions on several procedural points, refuse to meet with the Israelis in Jerusalem on the grounds that to do so would be to recognize Jerusalem's status as the capital of Israel, something even the U.S. has not done. White House officials seem increasingly convinced that Israel is deliberately imposing impossible conditions in order to prevent the talks from beginning. This, in turn, would postpone consideration of Reagan's broader plan, which the government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin opposes. Any delay in addressing Reagan's Sept. 1 plan would also enable Israel to proceed with the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, thereby gradually making any form of Palestinian sovereignty more difficult to accept.

The Administration was also angry last week about a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee amendment that would add $475 million to the proposed $2.5 billion in U.S. economic and military aid to Israel in 1983. Fearing that such an in crease in aid would signal that the U.S. was unable, or unwilling, to exercise any pressure on Israel, the White House lobbied hard against the proposal. Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir said last week that this White House action, which he labeled an "unfriendly act," would be "detrimental to Mideast peace."

In response, White House Spokesman Larry Speakes said that the Administration was "puzzled that Israel can call into question our good faith." He noted that the Administration aid request for Israel already represented an increase of 21% more than the amount spent in 1982, and that any further increase could come only at the expense of other allies. "It was a carefully arrived at figure, and we think it should be no more, no less," he said. Asked if the Administration sought to send the Israeli government a political or an economic message, Speakes said: "Both." Indeed, the idea of putting some sort of economic pressure on Israel is gaining ground in Washington. Said a White House aide: "Absolutely do not discount the threat of an aid cutoff."

The U.S. is not reserving all its anger for Israel. Officials in Washington are becoming increasingly disappointed by the P.L.O.'s inability to find a way to join the Middle East peace process. Washington hopes that the P.L.O., which was not invited to participate in the talks proposed by Reagan, will ask Jordan's King Hussein to represent the Palestinian position in any negotiations. Torn between rival factions within the P.L.O., Chairman Yasser Arafat has so far been unable to give Hussein the necessary mandate. Says a senior U.S. diplomat: "The P.L.O. today is finding it incredibly difficult to make the simplest decision."

In Israel, meanwhile, Begin was still concerned with the commission of inquiry investigation into the massacre of an estimated 800 Palestinians by Lebanese Christian militiamen in two refugee camps in Beirut last September. Although Begin had been warned that he was "liable to be harmed" by the commission's findings, he declined to exercise his right to reappear before the panel. In a three-page letter he argued, as he had in his appearance before the commission five weeks ago, that Israeli forces in Beirut "never imagined" that the Lebanese Christian forces entering the camps "would want to--or be able to--perpetrate a massacre."

The urgency of removing foreign forces from Lebanon was pointed up last week when Israeli and Lebanese troops clashed directly for the first time since Israel's invasion in June. One Israeli was wounded, and two Lebanese soldiers were killed. Meanwhile, violence between Druze fighters and Christian militiamen continued in the hilly Chouf region southeast of Beirut. Lebanese officials complained that the Israeli forces in the area were preventing the Lebanese army from moving in to defuse the situation.

With King Hussein due in Washington next week to discuss Reagan's overall initiative directly with him for the first time, it has become all the more urgent for the U.S. to persuade the Israeli government to begin negotiating a withdrawal from Lebanon. As a senior diplomat said: "Even the best proposals have got only a certain shelf life." That life is getting shorter by the day.

--By Sara C. Medina. Reported by Douglas Brew/Washington and Harry Kelly/Jerusalem

With reporting by Douglas Brew/Washington and Harry Kelly/Jerusalem

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