Moscow Summit: Tag-Team Diplomacy

By Michael S. Serrill

Last week's Moscow summit had been billed as the final act of the cold war. But within hours after Air Force One touched down at Sheremetyevo Airport, it was clear that the last vestiges of East-West tension had dissolved long before George Bush's arrival. In what both sides agreed was the friendliest U.S.-Soviet summit ever, Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev laughed and joked their way through the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which will reduce the two superpowers' nuclear arsenals, and a series of other agreements covering everything from agriculture to the arts. Bush agreed to try to provide Moscow with additional economic and technical aid. He also did his part to keep Gorbachev's restive empire from flying apart by traveling to Kiev to warn the Ukrainian legislature against any adventures in "suicidal nationalism."

As the Bush motorcade arrived in Kiev, the streets were crowded with nationalist spectators, many of them waving the blue-and-yellow flag of the once independent Ukrainian state. But he made it clear that the U.S. would not intervene in the disputes between the republics and Gorbachev's central government. "We will not try to pick winners and losers in political competitions between republics, or between republics and the center," said the President. "((That)) is your business, not the business of the U.S."

But Bush's comments on Soviet internal politics were overshadowed by the hope that the new spirit of U.S.-Soviet cooperation might spread to the Middle East. Secretary of State James Baker, with some important help from Moscow, persuaded Israel to sit down with its Arab neighbors in face-to-face peace talks that could begin in October. Bush hailed the coming peace conference as a "historic opportunity" for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement after 43 years of war and confrontation.

Bush and Baker traveled to Moscow with every intention of bringing Israel to the table. Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria had already accepted Israel's long-standing demand for bilateral talks. But Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had one last concern: the composition of the Palestinian delegation to the meetings. Israel rejects any participation in the talks by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. It also opposes the inclusion of any resident of East Jerusalem, a step that in Shamir's view might imply that the city's status as Israel's capital is open to negotiation.

To overcome Shamir's qualms, Bush and Gorbachev staged a diplomatic squeeze play. Baker holed up in Moscow and spent hours on the telephone trying to bring Shamir around. When Bush and Gorbachev announced on Wednesday -- before any public announcement from Shamir -- that they would issue invitations to an October peace conference, it seemed like a classic bit of diplomatic arm twisting directed at the recalcitrant Israelis. Bush said he was sending Baker to Jerusalem immediately "to obtain Israel's reply."

In fact, according to a senior Administration official, the announcement was a diplomatic charade: Shamir had agreed to attend the peace conference before Baker left Moscow. The Israeli leader's acquiescence was prompted in part by a Soviet promise to re-establish diplomatic relations, which were severed in 1967, if the talks get under way. Baker also assured him that the U.S. would not insist that Palestinians unacceptable to Shamir be included in the discussions.

But even after Shamir agreed to take part in the talks, he insisted that Baker travel to Israel to get the word. That was another example of what some diplomats see as the one-upmanship that the two men have been engaging in since the Bush Administration began reviving the peace process in March. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, the Secretary spent 90 minutes huddled with Shamir before they announced at a joint press conference that Arab-Israeli talks would indeed convene. Peace in the Middle East, said Baker, was "no longer simply a dream."

In a considerable understatement, Baker added that there was "some work" to be done to secure the cooperation of the Palestinians, who still insist that they will choose their own delegation without interference and that a representative of East Jerusalem must be included. With all the major Arab states, plus the Soviet Union and other European nations, ready to talk peace, the Palestinians may have no choice but to acquiesce to Shamir's formulation. Jordan's King Hussein has appealed to the P.L.O. not to raise problems over Palestinian representation. And Egyptian Foreign Minister Amre Moussa is seeking a possible compromise: Arab residents of East Jerusalem would be excluded from the first round of negotiations but included at a later stage.

For Shamir, the agreement to attend the conference required only a slight shift in emphasis: he simply said yes, Israel would sit down at the peace parley provided the Palestinian delegation was acceptable, rather than no, it would not attend if the Palestinian group was not acceptable. Beyond that, the stone-faced Prime Minister gave away little. At meetings with his right-wing supporters, Shamir emphasized that he had not agreed to sacrifice -- or even discuss -- the status of Jerusalem and that there was no requirement for Israel to halt construction of new settlements in the territories or lift the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by Israeli troops. "Trust me," Shamir told a gathering of Knesset members from the small rightist parties that hold his ruling Likud coalition together. "We won't withdraw one millimeter."

U.S., Soviet and other organizers of the peace conference hope the negotiating process may serve to soften Shamir's intransigence. Their strategy is to coax the old enemies toward agreement on less contentious issues in the hope that the result will be a climate of trust that enables progress on more explosive issues. "You want to give this process time so that thinking can evolve," says a senior Administration official. "Different kinds of compromises become possible over time because people see things in different ways."

The meetings will begin with a plenary session at which the U.S. and the Soviet Union will be co-hosts. The site has not been decided, but Washington, Geneva and Cairo have been mentioned as possibilities. Present will be Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. The European Community will participate, and the Gulf Cooperation Council, representing Saudi Arabia and other gulf states, will send an observer, as will the United Nations.

After two days of opening ceremonies, the talks will break up into bilateral groups: Israeli-Syrian talks on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights; Israeli- Jordanian-Palestinian discussions on the future of the West Bank and Gaza; Israeli-Lebanese negotiations over Israel's "security zone" along their common border. Simultaneously, multilateral working groups will tackle less contentious regional problems such as water, the environment and arms control.

Given the extraordinary lineup of forces favoring the conference, it is likely that the remaining roadblocks to the talks will be knocked down. Whether the negotiators will be able to find any common ground once they sit down together is another matter. "Don't be surprised if the photo opportunity passes, and then the bilateral negotiations bog down very quickly," warns William Quandt, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution.

Gorbachev's and Bush's tag-team diplomacy on the Middle East was just one consequence of what the Soviet leader described as a warm "feeling of solidarity" that has developed between the two men. Bush responded to Gorbachev's many compliments by toasting him as "a man I respect and admire" and by promising to seek most-favored-nation trading status for the Soviet Union. He even chided reporters for blaming the Soviet government "before you know what happened" in last week's killing of seven guards at a Lithuanian customs house

Gorbachev suggested that with START out of the way the superpowers were in a position to tackle other sources of international tension, like Yugoslavia and Central America. Certainly the agreement to hold talks in the Middle East was proof of the promise that East-West collaboration holds out to the world. Until Bush and Gorbachev teamed up, the two sides had so little to say to each other that they could not even agree to talk.

With reporting by Michael Duffy with Bush, J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Robert Slater/ Jerusalem