PLO Seeks Flexible Stand on Vote : Rejects Shamir’s Terms but Wants to Encourage U.S. Role

CAIRO — The Palestine Liberation Organization, while rejecting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s terms for elections in West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is trying to devise what one official said will be “a constructive response” aimed at winning favor with the Bush Administration.

The need to show flexibility on the idea of elections, which the United States supports, reflects in part a desire not to alienate or discourage Washington at a time when the new Administration is still formulating its Middle East policy.

Although the PLO and its supporters would like to have seen the Administration get off to a quicker, less cautious start in the Middle East, the policy finally emerging from Washington also seems, in the Arab view, to be less biased and more pro-Palestinian than that of the Reagan Administration.

Egyptian, Jordanian and PLO officials say that they were all encouraged by recent remarks by President Bush in which he referred to Palestinian “political rights” and the need to end Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Administration’s refusal to break off the dialogue begun with the PLO last December, despite Israeli pressure to do so, is also seen as a sign that, in the words of a senior Egyptian official, “the United States has decided to become seriously involved in the peace process.”

Thus, while Shamir’s proposals and the motives behind them are still viewed with intense suspicion, the PLO is coming under heavy pressure to formulate a constructive rejoinder at a time when both Arabs and Israelis are competing for Washington’s ear and struggling to define terms of reference for what is expected to be a crucial period for the Middle East peace process in the months ahead.

Sides Far Apart

Officially, the two sides remain far apart on the idea of elections, which the Bush Administration has embraced in principle as a way of engaging in “mutual confidence-building,” something that it believes is essential if the peace process is to move forward.

The PLO supports local elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a stepping stone toward the direct negotiations it seeks with Israel on eventual Palestinian independence. To ensure their honesty, however, it says that elections must be held under international supervision and only after an Israeli military withdrawal from the territories.

Shamir, whose proposals for elections are rooted in the 1978 Camp David accords, envisions something much more limited. The elections, held under strict Israeli supervision, would let Palestinians in the occupied territories choose local, non-PLO representatives who would then negotiate interim autonomy arrangements with Israel. After a two- to three-year transition period, negotiations to determine the “final status” of the territories could then begin.

Independence would not be an option, however. And before elections, the Palestinians would have to end the intifada, the 16-month-long civil uprising against Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

While this remains unacceptable to the Palestinians, PLO and other Arab officials have confirmed that the outlines of a possible compromise are being discussed in intensive consultations now under way in Cairo, Amman and Tunis, where the PLO has its headquarters.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew to Amman this week to discuss the idea with Jordan’s King Hussein, who leaves next week for the United States, and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat is expected in Cairo shortly. A number of other senior PLO officials are already here, meeting with Egyptian officials to coordinate a position on the election issue that Hussein will take to Washington.

“If, as we suspect, the aim of the Shamir plan is to divide the Palestinians inside the territories from those outside or to create leaders who would replace the PLO, then it is a complete non-starter as far as we are concerned,” a senior Egyptian official said. Still, the official added, “we don’t want Arafat to reject it out of hand. We want him to explore it and see if we can’t come up with something more constructive to take back to the Americans.”

Yasser Abed-Rabho, a senior PLO official in Tunis, has dismissed the Shamir plan as an attempt to sell “the shabby cloth of Camp David . . . as the latest in Yves Saint Laurent.” Yet, pressure on the PLO to re-tailor the proposal into something more fashionable has also come from prominent West Bank Palestinians, some of whom are currently in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials.

Under one compromise plan said by Palestinian sources in Cairo to reflect the thinking of “pro-PLO circles in the West Bank,” the PLO would drop its insistence on total Israeli withdrawal from the territories before election day and agree to a two-year transitional phase, with the understanding that this would lead to Palestinian “self-determination.” The latter is a code phrase that, by current definition, means establishment of a Palestinian mini-state in the West Bank and Gaza in confederation with Jordan.

Under this plan, the Israelis would withdraw their forces only from major population centers before elections, which could be held under some kind of joint Israeli-Palestinian supervision if Shamir continues to reject international observers.

Since Israeli authorities have threatened to arrest any West Bank Palestinian who meets with the PLO, the plan was brought to Cairo this week by Said Kanaan, an influential West Bank businessman, and discussed at length in two meetings with senior Egyptian Foreign Ministry officials, who are expected to take it up with Arafat when he arrives. The plan has also been discussed in Jerusalem with U.S. aides, who are understood to have expressed a keen interest in it.

Key Arafat Adviser

Bassam abu Sharif, one of Arafat’s senior advisers, is already in Cairo and, while he would not endorse the plan when asked about it, he seemed careful not to rule anything out.

“The issue is not the PLO’s flexibility. We have shown our commitment to a peace settlement by renouncing terrorism, accepting Israel’s right to exist behind safe and secure borders and by accepting (U.N.) Resolutions 242 and 338,” Abu Sharif said in an interview.

“What we now want to know is whether Shamir will accept 242 and 338. If the Israelis will accept 242 and 338 and the right of the Palestinians to live in their own independent state,” he added, “then everything, I repeat, everything else would be negotiable, including the modalities of elections and timetables.”

Resolutions 242 and 338, adopted by the U.N. Security Council after the 1967 and 1973 Middle East wars, call upon Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories in return for the right to exist behind safe and secure borders. They have formed the legal basis for all U.S. peace-making efforts in the region, and their acceptance by Arafat, along with his pledge to renounce terrorism, opened the way for the start of talks last December between the United States and the PLO.

Talks in Tunis

Those talks are expected to resume in Tunis, where the PLO is headquartered, sometime next month, after Hussein’s visit to Washington. High on the agenda will be a discussion of the election initiative and ways in which it might be made to work.

“We are studying and planning now to see how we can come up with a constructive response to the idea of elections,” said Kanaan.

While Shamir is widely believed to have dusted off the Camp David accords merely as a way of relieving pressure on Israel to reciprocate the PLO’s latest concessions, the Palestinians, in effect, are being urged by its supporters in the West Bank and in the Arab world at large to counter Shamir’s tactic with flexibility.

“We want to corner Shamir by reciprocating positively,” Kanaan said.