A Pinch of Progress

By William E. Smith

Israel and Lebanon agree at last on what they will talk about

"I wish to inform you that the delegations have reached an agreement on the agenda." With those words, Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Avi Pazner announced the first hint of progress in the 2 1/2-week-old peace talks between Israel and Lebanon. All it meant was that the two sides had at last agreed on what they are willing to talk to each other about. But in a season when diplomatic progress on the problems of the Middle East has been practically nonexistent, it represented a modest advance.

What gave the announcement an added sense of drama was that it coincided with the return to the Middle East of President Reagan's Special Envoy Philip Habib. On leaving Washington earlier in the week, Habib had declared: "There is an urgent need to put the problems of Lebanon behind us so that we can move on to the larger issues of peace in the region." Whether the Reagan Administration's rising impatience over the deadlock contributed to last week's agreement was not clear, but the return of Habib undoubtedly increased the pressure on both the Israelis and the Lebanese. Even as the agenda agreement was being announced, Habib was reported to have told the two sides that they should now work toward a first-stage withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon by Feb. 12. The deadline was no doubt optimistic, but it was intended to show that the U.S. would have little patience with further procedural wrangling.

Throughout the 2 1/2-week deadlock, Lebanese delegates had maintained that the talks should be aimed at securing a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, thus leading to a withdrawal of Syrian and Palestine Liberation Organization troops as well. The Israelis were determined that the talks deal with "normalization" of relations between the two countries, and that they should also discuss arrangements for maintaining security in southern Lebanon, opposite the Israeli border. The government of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel feared that any steps toward diplomatic recognition of Israel would upset Muslim-Christian relations within Lebanon and, worse, anger neighboring Arab states. Lebanon needs Saudi Arabian assistance in repairing the massive damage caused by the war, as well as Syrian cooperation in withdrawing forces from Lebanon. Both the Saudis and the Syrians have expressed their opposition to an agreement between Israel and Lebanon that deals with anything other than the departure of foreign troops.

In the end, the two sides agreed on a compromise formula that permitted both to claim a measure of victory. Israel dropped its insistence on the word normalization and instead accepted the more neutral phrase "a framework for mutual relations," which would include "liaison, ending of hostile propaganda, the movement of goods, products and persons, and communications." All the main points on the agenda, it was agreed, would be regarded as equally important and would be discussed concurrently "in the light of their interrelationship." Israel would be able to stress "termination of the state of war," while Lebanon could emphasize "complete withdrawals."

The first official Arab reaction to the agreement was predictably negative. In Moscow, where he had spent two days getting acquainted with new Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov, P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat said that the negotiations between Lebanon and Israel were "worse than Camp David." In Nicaragua, where he was attending a meeting of nonaligned countries, Syrian Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam said that his government would resist any peace terms imposed on Lebanon by Israel. Declared Khaddam: "We affirm our categorical rejection of the Israeli conditions proposed to Lebanon." Syria has already rejected Reagan's Sept. 1 peace initiative, which calls for a future relationship between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, largely because it makes no mention of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war and has since annexed. In addition, Syria's view is influenced by the fact that the Soviet Union is its principal arms supplier. The Soviet Union has begun to rebuild Syria's air force, which lost more than 100 planes in air battles with the Israelis last summer. According to Israeli officials, the Soviets have now installed SA-5 missiles in Syria to protect the country from Israeli air attacks.

The Lebanese were particularly anxious to get on with the peace talks. They feared that continued delays would increase the difficulty of getting the Israelis out of the country, not to mention the Syrians and the P.L.O. They were also concerned that the buzz-word normalization on the agenda might have made a Syrian and P.L.O. withdrawal impossible. This in turn caused the Lebanese to wonder whether the Israelis, in trying to impose such a condition, were serious about the negotiations. So they welcomed the compromise agenda proposed by U.S. Envoy Morris Draper, who has attended the Israeli-Lebanese negotiating sessions from the beginning. Lebanese Prime Minister Chafik al Wazzan said he was pleased with the agenda agreement but emphasized that his government still insisted on the unconditional withdrawal of Israeli forces, "which is our right." At the same time, however, the Lebanese government will conduct informal negotiations with Syria and the P.L.O. to work out the arrangements for the removal of their forces from Lebanon as part of the whole troop-withdrawal process.

Despite Draper's acknowledged contribution to the Israeli-Lebanese negotiations, there is little doubt that President Reagan's decision to send Habib back to the Middle East provided a badly needed stimulant. Habib is regarded in the area as the President's top representative and a tough negotiator who can shout and pound on tables as the need arises. In his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin last week, Habib delivered a letter from Reagan that, according to Israeli government officials, said the President attaches importance to his meeting with Begin next month and wants it to go ahead as planned.

According to the same sources, Habib apologized for recent press reports disclosing that the White House was thinking of calling off the meeting unless the Israelis and the Lebanese had agreed on an agenda by that time. Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir telephoned Begin during the Habib meeting to tell him of the agenda agreement, enabling Begin to relay the good news to his American guest.

Habib may also have asked Begin whether the Israeli government would accept a freeze of three months or so in its aggressive program of building new Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In his Sept. 1 speech, Reagan had specifically asked the Israelis to stop building settlements as a gesture that would help the Camp David peace talks start again, preferably with some kind of Jordanian or Palestinian participation. During a visit to Washington last month, King Hussein told Reagan that he could not enter the peace process without some evidence of Israeli restraint in its colonization of the West Bank.

So far, there is no sign that the Israeli government is prepared to accept such a freeze. Nor, for that matter, is the Labor opposition, which last week gave the Histadrut, the party-affiliated labor federation, permission to continue with construction activities in the West Bank. Though the debate was said to have been extremely heated, neither Party Leader Shimon Peres nor his rival, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, took part in the discussions.

In the meantime, King Hussein and P.L.O. Chairman Arafat met again in Amman to talk about the possibility of forming a joint delegation for future negotiations over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In addition to Jordanian representatives, such a delegation would include West Bank Palestinians approved by but not belonging to the P.L.O. Both men would need strong Arab backing for so bold a plan; Arafat would also need the support of his own organization, whose de facto parliament, the Palestine National Council, is scheduled to meet in Algiers on Feb. 14 for its first session since the forced withdrawal of P.L.O. fighters from Beirut last summer.

Even if the Arab states and the P.L.O. support the Hussein-Arafat strategy, there is no indication that the Israelis will go along with it. Last week Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who remains influential in spite of the controversy surrounding his role in the invasion of Lebanon, declared that Israel would not be prepared to talk either "with the P.L.O. or with the people who speak for it." This, like so many Israeli pronouncements, could only cause further delays in the negotiating process as Israeli bulldozers continue with their frenetic settlement of the West Bank.

--By William E. Smith.

Reported by Harry Kelly/Jerusalem and William Stewart/Beirut

With reporting by Harry Kelly/Jerusalem, William Stewart/Beirut This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.