Bush Sees New Hope in Mideast : Arrives in Israel, Cites Peres-Hassan Talks as Peace Step

JERUSALEM — Saying he could not think “of any better time to have come here,” Vice President George Bush said Sunday that last week’s milestone summit meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Morocco’s King Hassan II breathed new life into hopes for peace in the Middle East.

Arriving in Israel amid extraordinary security measures on the first stop of a three-nation, 10-day tour of the region, Bush said the summit “captured the imagination of everybody in my country.” He promised that the United States will do everything it can to promote Mideast peace.

The vice president is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit the region since Secretary of State George P. Shultz came in May, 1985, and aides to Peres said they see his presence alone as lending additional momentum to that generated by the historic Moroccan summit.

No New Initiatives

Israeli officials said, however, that Bush brought no new peace initiatives from the United States.

Bush will also visit Jordan and Egypt before returning to the United States on Aug. 5. In both the U.S. and Israeli views, Jordan is the key to negotiating a solution to the problem of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and of the 1.3 million Palestinians living in those territories.

Israeli officials also hope that the Bush visit will provide the final push needed to complete an agreement with Egypt over how to handle a longstanding border dispute involving a small stretch of Sinai beachfront called Taba. On Sunday, it was announced in Cairo that Egyptian-Israeli talks on Taba will resume next week after a four-month lapse.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has said that once Israel and Egypt conclude terms under which the dispute will be turned over to a panel of arbitrators, he will meet with Peres. Such a meeting would further improve the climate for progress toward some kind of wider Arab-Israeli talks, Peres hopes.

50-50 Chance for Morocco

Officials traveling with Bush added that there is a “50-50 chance” that he will add a stop in Morocco to his swing through the region.

“There are discussions going on at the diplomatic level, but it all depends on whether the two heads of state (Peres and Hassan) feel it would be useful,” one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. If Bush does go to Morocco, this official added, it would presumably be in connection with additional Israeli-Moroccan contacts in the future.

Morocco last week became only the second Arab country ever to publicly receive an Israeli head of state, and Hassan’s gesture was widely condemned by the more militant Arab states. On Sunday, the Moroccan monarch announced that he is giving up his four-year chairmanship of the Arab League because of the negative reaction among other Arab nations to his meeting with Peres.

The only other Arab leader to meet openly with his Israeli counterpart was Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated two years after his country signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state.

Given the additional tension in the region after the Peres-Hassan summit, security was exceptionally tight for Bush’s visit, with nearly 1,000 Israeli police deployed around Jerusalem under the code name Operation Falcon.

Full Battle Dress

Paramilitary border police in full battle dress ringed the tarmac at Ben-Gurion International Airport for the arrival of Air Force Two, the vice president’s plane. And police helicopters circled overhead.

Bush traveled the 30 miles from the airport to Jerusalem in a heavily guarded, 50-vehicle convoy, and plainclothes and uniformed security officers appeared to far outnumber other guests in and around the King David Hotel, where the vice president’s party is staying.

Bush held largely ceremonial meetings Sunday evening with Peres and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir before attending a dinner in his honor at the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament. He is to have more substantive meetings with both officials Wednesday before leaving for Jordan.

Meanwhile, at Sunday’s regular Israeli Cabinet meeting, Peres revealed that he had proposed to Hassan a “year of negotiations,” during which “an end would be put to hostile acts,” according to a Cabinet source who briefed reporters after the meeting.

Rejection by Hassan

While the source did not say so, another official close to Peres conceded that Hassan had rejected the idea.

Peres also briefed his ministers on what the Israeli press is already calling a “10-point plan” that he unveiled in Morocco. Actually, the plan consists of a mixed bag of promises, proposals and principles that have been reiterated by Israeli officials in various public forums in the past.

“None of the individual points are new, but the packaging is new,” commented one source in the prime minister’s office. This source described it as a combination of two working papers, some of which had been submitted to Hassan ahead of time as a suggested joint statement to be released after the Morocco meeting.

The actual joint communique released by the two sides Thursday was much shorter and more general, but the Israeli sources said Hassan agreed to pass Peres’ plan along to the other Arab states.

The Major Points

The paper’s main points:

--Regional leaders must do all they can, as quickly as possible, to avert a new tragedy in the area.

--The Palestinian problem must be solved in all its dimensions, and the only way to do so is by political and peaceful means.

--Peres would submit to his government details of the meeting with Hassan even though the talks “did not assume the character of negotiations.”

--It is Peres’ view that the main obstacle to progress toward peace is not the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the positions of the sides, but rather a lack of readiness for dialogue.

--Israel is ready for negotiations with representatives of Arab states and authentic Palestinian representatives who seek peace and reject terrorism.

--Israel will not extend its sovereignty over the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as long as negotiations are not completed.

--Negotiations should be without preconditions--”each Arab state can make its proposal on peace, security and the future of the Palestinians, while Israel will present its stand on these issues.” Negotiations will be within an “international framework” agreed on by the sides.

(Peres specifically proposed that Israeli representatives meet “representatives of Arab states . . . in Morocco with international accompaniment, based on U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338,” according to a Cabinet source. The U.N. resolutions implicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist, and “international accompaniment” is Israel’s answer to Arab demands for a Mideast peace conference under Security Council auspices.)

--Israel will continue to guarantee freedom of worship for all religious communities.

--Israel will check the possibilities of meeting with “authentic Palestinian representatives to open a true dialogue within the framework of efforts to find a solution, taking into consideration the desires of the Palestinians on the one hand, and Israel’s security on the other.”

--Solutions for the deep and dangerous Middle East dispute should be found quickly for the sake of the prosperity of the whole region, “which had enjoyed economic cooperation in the past.”