Middle East Summit in Alexandria

By William E. Smith

For once, the good news from the Middle East outweighed the bad, though not by a very wide margin. The good news was that after a final four-day bargaining session, Israel and Egypt had settled the details for submitting to international arbitration the pesky Taba dispute, which had been impeding good relations between the two countries for the past four years. That in turn led to a two-day summit meeting in Alexandria between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The event apparently succeeded in moderating what Israelis call the "cold peace," which has prevailed since Israel launched its invasion of Lebanon in June 1982.

The bad news was that Middle East terrorism was again on the increase. Neither Pakistani authorities investigating the attempted hijacking of a Pan American airliner in Karachi two weeks ago nor Turkish police probing the massacre of 21 worshipers at a synagogue in Istanbul had yet announced the identity of the perpetrators or their mentors. In Lebanon, meanwhile, gunmen kidnaped two more Americans in West Beirut, bringing to six the number of U.S. citizens who, along with a dozen foreigners of other nationalities, are believed to be held hostage in that country by various terrorist groups. And in southern Lebanon, after Palestinian guerrillas attempted to infiltrate Israel in a rubber dinghy, Israeli warplanes attacked a suspected ammunition dump on the outskirts of the port city of Sidon, devastating an industrial district.

The Alexandria summit was the twelfth meeting between the leaders of Israel and Egypt since 1977, but only the first since 1981. The talks took place in the beige, horseshoe-shaped Ras el Tin Palace, once the summer residence of King Farouk, Egypt's last monarch, and now used by the government for official purposes.

Whatever the lasting significance of the Alexandria summit, the two leaders went to some effort to demonstrate that it was a psychological success. At the close of the first session, Mubarak told reporters, "We have concentrated heavily on the Palestinian issue, which is vitally important for the peace process. I think the Israeli position is improving a lot." For his part, Peres declared that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip "have a right to participate in the determination of their own future," and that Israelis "have no desire to dominate another people." Later he added, "If we had more time, we would have made more progress. We have reached much more understanding on a very complicated issue."

At the end of their talks, Mubarak and Peres agreed to set up a committee to prepare for an international conference on peace in the Middle East. Egypt and Jordan have long favored such a meeting. The U.S. and Israel have opposed the idea, in part, because it would necessarily include the Soviet Union. The conference may never be held and the newly proposed committee may never meet, but last week's agreement suggested that Peres was willing to explore new ways of reaching a comprehensive peace settlement.

At the close of the summit, Mubarak's government also announced that after a gap of four years, it would again be represented by an ambassador in Tel Aviv. The new ambassador will be Mohammed Bassiouny, a career diplomat who has served as Egypt's charge d'affaires in Israel ever since Mubarak recalled his previous ambassador in 1982 in protest over the war in Lebanon.

Even the modest accomplishments of the Alexandria summit would not have been possible if the participants had not first managed to find a formula to resolve the long-standing dispute over the sliver of Red Sea beach front at Taba (see box). This issue had become an embodiment of the dashed hopes of peaceful reconciliation between the two countries. To the Egyptians, Israel's retention of Taba violated the spirit of the Camp David understanding that the entire Sinai was to be returned to Egyptian control. To the Israelis, disenchanted by the cool, distant and at times angry attitude of the Egyptians toward them, Taba became a vehicle of defiance. Egypt might criticize Israeli policies toward Lebanon and the Palestinians, might reduce its trade and cultural ties to an absolute minimum and allow its press to publish vicious anti-Semitic cartoons, but Israel would hold on to Taba. It was a gesture that Cairo was sure to understand.

The frigid but correct relations between the two countries began to improve a bit almost immediately after Peres became Prime Minister in late 1984. Early this year his coalition Cabinet agreed to accept international arbitration as a means of resolving the Taba dispute. But Mubarak still rejected the idea of a summit until the details of the arbitration had been worked out. Two weeks ago, Secretary of State George Shultz sent Assistant Secretary Richard Murphy to the region to help with the negotiations.

Finally last week Israeli, Egyptian and American representatives, meeting at Cairo's Mena House Hotel within sight of the Pyramids, cobbled together a compromise on the two outstanding issues. One was the choice of three independent arbitrators who would join one Egyptian and one Israeli on the panel. The U.S. had originally submitted the names of 30 possible candidates. Eventually, the list grew to more than 70, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and reportedly Queen Elizabeth II. The names of the panel members will be announced later. Second, the negotiators reached a compromise on the specific geographical area in dispute.

Before they could get to the summit, both Mubarak and Peres had to perform some skillful diplomatic maneuvering. The Egyptian President is always concerned about being isolated in the Arab world, since he is the only Arab leader who talks regularly to the Israelis. Mubarak has been trying in recent months to persuade King Hussein of Jordan to rejoin the peace process, but to no avail. Hussein, still smarting from the failure of his earlier peace initiative involving Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, remained aloof. Indeed, while last week's summit was under way, Hussein was in London recovering from a sinus operation. Mubarak also approached Arafat, but the P.L.O. leader was as inflexible as ever on the central issue of recognizing Israel's right to exist. Though he lacked overt Arab support, Mubarak decided to press ahead with the summit anyway, thereby strengthening peace with Israel and his ties with the U.S.

The problems Peres faced were at home. Looming over all summit preparations was Israel's imminent change of Prime Ministers. Next month, under the terms of a rotation agreement adopted by the Labor Party and the right-wing Likud bloc in 1984, Peres will exchange posts with the Likud leader, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Peres was under so much pressure from the Likud bloc last week that on the morning of his flight to Egypt, he had to promise his Cabinet that while in Alexandria he would make no concessions concerning the West Bank and Gaza. Peres invited Shamir to join him at Alexandria, but the Foreign Minister said no, preferring to distance himself from any commitments that might be made. As the Likud's observer at the talks, Peres took along Dan Meridor, 39, a Knesset member who was the Cabinet Secretary under Prime Minister Menachem Begin and is one of the few political figures who still regularly sees the reclusive former leader.

Despite the various obstacles, the two sides were able to resolve the Taba dispute and reach the summit. David Kimche, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and a participant in the Mena House talks, said progress was based on "the realization that if we didn't succeed, the consequences would be disastrous for the peace process."

Some outside factors helped. A key one was Mubarak's concern about continued economic help from Washington. Egypt is currently trying to persuade the U.S. to reduce the interest rate on its military loans, a critical issue for a country that has a total of some $36 billion in foreign debt. In addition, the foreign-aid bill currently being debated in Congress would include $3 billion for Israel and $2.1 billion for Egypt. With Peres scheduled to visit Washington this week for talks with President Reagan, Mubarak did not want it to appear that Egypt was stonewalling on Middle East peace talks.

Another factor was Peres' determination to get the Taba dispute settled so that he could show some sign of progress in normalizing relations with Egypt. When he took over as Prime Minister two years ago, Peres said that was one of his principal goals, along with withdrawing Israeli forces from Lebanon and restoring the health of the Israeli economy. Thanks to the Alexandria summit, he can now say he made considerable advancements in all three areas.

The grim drama of terrorism, though, did not stop for the Alexandria summit. In Pakistan, authorities said they still did not know the full identities or sponsorship of the four Palestinian terrorists whose hijacking of Pan American Flight 73 led to the death of 21 people. Police said the wounded leader of the group, known only as Mustafa, was still too ill to be questioned, though there were reports at week's end that his interrogation had begun. In Washington, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, following an Israeli account, implied that Palestinian Renegade Abu Nidal might have been behind the attack, but quickly added, "We don't have any proof." Others thought the terrorists might be linked to Force 17, a pro-Arafat P.L.O. unit blamed for the murder of three Israelis in Cyprus last year.

At the same time, Pakistani police arrested an Arab named Salman Taraki, whom they believed to be a Palestinian even though he was carrying a Libyan passport. He had been in Pakistan for a month or more prior to the Pan Am hijacking. One U.S. official, after hearing so much conflicting information about the investigation, remarked that the hijackers and their compatriots seemed to have put up "a lot of deliberate smoke screens."

In the case of the synagogue massacre in Istanbul, in which 21 worshipers died, even less was known because the two terrorists had been killed by one of their own grenades. Several underground organizations claimed responsibility for the outrage, but officials had few leads as to who was really behind the attack.

Meanwhile, in West Beirut two more Americans disappeared into the void. After all the horrors perpetrated against Americans there, it seemed almost unimaginable that there were any left. In fact, however, a few still live in the Muslim half of the city. The first to be kidnaped last week was Frank Reed, 53, of Malden, Mass., director of the Lebanese International School, who, incredibly enough, was on his way to play golf near the Beirut airport when he was seized by two gunmen. Three days later, four men grabbed Joseph Cicippio, 56, a Pennsylvanian who had been serving as acting comptroller at the American University of Beirut, as he walked from his campus apartment building to his nearby office. Both Americans are married to Muslim women, and both had reportedly converted to Islam, but that was not enough for the terrorists.

An anonymous telephone caller purporting to speak for Islamic Jihad, the shadowy extremist organization that has kidnaped several other Americans, claimed responsibility for Reed's abduction. But in a typewritten statement sent subsequently to a Western news agency, Islamic Jihad denied involvement and called on the real culprits to "come forth boldly and shoulder the responsibility." To prove its terrorist credentials, the organization enclosed a Polaroid photo of a haggard David Jacobsen, 55, director of the American University Hospital, whom it kidnaped in May 1985.

There was perhaps a touch of contrivance in the drama of Egyptian Prime Minister Ali Lutfi flying home last week from London, where he had met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to preside over a midnight Cabinet meeting to approve the Taba agreement. But it was a welcome change from the grim tales of hijacking, kidnaping and wanton murder that so regularly emanate from the region. If nothing else, the Taba agreement and the Alexandria summit demonstrated that even in the Middle East, common sense can sometimes win out.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Alexandria and Roland Flamini/Jerusalem, with other bureaus