He Urges a New Focus on Issues : Mideast Peace Effort Stymied, Shultz Says

HELSINKI, Finland — Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Tuesday that more than two years of diplomatic talk about an international peace conference have reached a dead end and that it is time for the Middle East antagonists to stop wasting time on procedure and begin concentrating on the substance of their disputes.

“Excessive concentration on modalities probably is not the way to pursue things, and we ought to be scratching our heads . . . more on what the substance ought to be,” Shultz said after two meetings in London with King Hussein of Jordan.

Shultz said his five days of talks with Israeli, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders failed to break the stalemate over whether to convene an international conference to serve as a forum for peace negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, especially Jordan.

Effort Began in 1985

Washington has tried since early 1985 to mediate between Israel and Jordan over Hussein’s conference proposal because, officials have said, the procedural questions should be easier to settle than the core issues of the dispute.

After his talks with Hussein, Shultz flew to Helsinki to prepare for crucial arms control talks Thursday and Friday in Moscow with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

On the way from London to Helsinki, Shultz said his Middle East trip, his first to the region in 29 months, was “worthwhile but nothing earth-shattering.”

“It is important to keep working at it, and we will keep working at it,” Shultz said, “but I can’t point to anything” that brought Israel and its Arab neighbors closer to a settlement.

In early 1985, Hussein proposed an international conference to be attended by Israel, its Arab neighbors and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. He said he would not negotiate with Israel without such international backing.

Israel and Jordan have been technically at war since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, in which Israel captured the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Shimon Peres, prime minister of Israel in 1985, endorsed the conference proposal, though he added conditions that were unacceptable to Hussein. Peres’ Israeli political rival, Yitzhak Shamir, who is the now prime minister, opposes a conference under any conditions.

At the time of Hussein’s proposal, U.S. officials called it a major advance because the Jordanian monarch said he was ready to enter talks without being assured in advance of how the negotiations would end.

However, Shultz said Tuesday that he has concluded that recent discussions of procedure are going nowhere because “we all are concerned about where we would go” in terms of substance. He said it would be wise to have a firm idea about the probable result of negotiations before entering into them.

Shultz’s apparent abandonment of the international conference idea was a victory for Shamir over Peres, who is now foreign minister, in Israel’s domestic political infighting. Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy was sent back to Jerusalem to brief Israeli leaders on Shultz’s talks with Hussein and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

‘Sort of Yes and No’

Asked if Hussein wants a substantive conference, Shultz said, “It’s a sort of yes and no.” Jordanian officials have said publicly that the conference cannot be a shell, but Jordanian leaders have said privately that the most important decisions should be left to direct Jordanian-Israeli negotiations.

It is not entirely clear where the process will go from here. Leaders on both sides of the dispute have said privately that only a strong push from Washington could get the peace process off dead center.

With the United States approaching an election year, Shultz’s just-completed trip may have been the last gasp for efforts by the Reagan Administration to get talks started between Israeli and Arab leaders.

It now seems unlikely that much progress can be made before general elections are held next year in the United States and Israel.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov was asked whether the U.S. attack on an Iranian oil platform in the Persian Gulf would affect Shultz’s scheduled meeting with Shevardnadze later this week.

Gerasimov said the incident would undoubtedly be discussed during their talks on regional conflicts. However, he indicated that it would not block agreement on a treaty to eliminate intermediate nuclear forces or prevent a summit meeting this year between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

On the prospects for a nuclear weapons agreement, Gerasimov said: “We have every reason to be optimistic. . . . We see no major obstacles (but) it’s a little early to applaud since we have some way to go.”

Times staff writer William J. Eaton, in Moscow, contributed to this article.