U.S. Said to Be Prodding Israel for Details of Elections Plan

The U.S. government is prodding Israeli leaders to furnish details of how it plans to implement Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s plan to hold Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In high-level meetings here over the weekend, U.S. diplomats reportedly told Israeli leaders that U.S. Secretary of State James Baker is anxious for Israel to clarify several points of the election plan.

These include who would be eligible to run, whether the elections would be area-wide or municipally based, whether East Jerusalem residents could vote and what linkage would connect the elections to a sustained peace process.

The apparent U.S. pressure comes as Israeli leaders are attempting to play down the significance of Palestinian moves to reject the elections plan.

Several ad hoc teams within the government have begun to flesh out elements of Shamir’s peace initiative, which he presented to Baker and President Bush earlier this month in Washington.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin is due in Washington later this month, and he apparently will seek to move the dialogue forward, since he and Shamir are fairly closely aligned in supporting the elections scenario.

Rabin, in a weekend radio interview, urged the Israeli government to stress a political linkage between the elections and the second phase of the Shamir plan: negotiations over the final status of the territories. He said this could make the elections a palatable option for the Palestinians.

LIKUD LEADERS UNEASY

Shamir and the Likud moderates have balked so far at any such explicit linkage. Hard-liners in the premier’s party have not concealed their unhappiness over the entire elections idea.

Economics and Planning Minister Yitzhak Modai, for instance, charged that Shamir was leading Israel into a “situation from which it will be virtually impossible to extricate ourselves.”

Rabin, a Laborite, is said to be more open to the U.S. demands for flexibility on several key points. Political observers say the defense minister is gently trying to bring Shamir and his close aides around to his positions.

Shamir has not yet appointed a special ministerial panel to formulate the specifics of the Israeli plan. But separate groups have already been formed in the Foreign Ministry and in the Prime Minister’s office, under senior officials, to study various elements of the package.

In the Foreign Ministry, the key team working on the elections is headed by Foreign Minister Moshe Arens’ close political aide, Salai Meridor, while teams dealing with two other elements of the Shamir plan, the reaffirmation of Camp David and refugee resettlement will convene under the director-general, Reuven Merhav.

Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have privately predicted that rejection of the elections proposal last week by West Bank Palestinians will not be their last word on the issue.

Shamir said he hoped that the elections initiative would still “enable us to advance toward resolving the conflict.”

Rabin, for his part, in a hard-hitting radio interview, warned that there will be still tougher measures against the Palestinian uprising if the local populace in the territories refuses to cooperate with the elections initiative.

Rabin and other Israeli leaders have condemned the public rejection of the proposal by 80 local Palestinians last week as the product of intensive pressure and threats from the Palestine Liberation Organization.

A COERCED REJECTION STATEMENT?

But Ori Nir, writing Friday in the daily newspaper Ha’aretz, observed that several prominent Palestinians in the West Bank did not sign the statement, which was issued on Wednesday.

Missing are the signatures of important figures on the left wing, as well as those of such moderates as Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij, East Jerusalem newspaper editor Hanna Seniora and Gaza lawyer Fayez Abu-Rahme.

Also missing are the names of supporters of the fundamentalist Islamic Resistance Movement.

Foreign Minister Arens was quoted Friday as saying that the Palestinian leaders’ statement may have been signed under coercion. “We don’t know if they issued their statement of their own free will,” he told the newspaper Hadashot.

“We intend to make an effort to persuade them to retract their statement and to agree to the democratic process we are offering them,” he said.