East Peace Talks

MADRID -- After several months of secret negotiations, Secretary of State James A. Baker III announced last night that he will visit China this month, a trip that is bound to revive the debate over the Bush administration's stance toward thehard-line Beijing government.Mr. Baker will be the highest-level Bush administration official to visit Beijing since the violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in June 1989.His announcement of the trip, made at the close of the Middle East peace talks in Madrid, came only a few days after reports that China may be helping Iran develop a nuclear bomb.

BONN, Germany -- American Jewish leaders, rebuffed by the Bush administration, have asked Germany to break with U.S. policy and provide billions of dollars in aid to Israel to resettle Jews from the former Soviet Union."

Hopes of rescuing the Middle East peace talks ride on Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's visit to Washington, which concludes in a meeting with President Clinton today. On Monday, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat hosted U.S. emissary Dennis Ross and high-level Israeli diplomats in Tunis but refused to resume the talks, which he suspended after the mass murder of Palestinians in Hebron by an Israeli-American settler on Feb. 25.In all likelihood, Mr. Arafat wants to resume the peace process if he is given enough to face down Arab critics of his policy.

JERUSALEM -- Three senior members of the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace talks are threatening to resign because of sharp differences with the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman, Yasser Arafat, the head of the delegation said yesterday.Faisal al-Husseini, Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat left yesterday to present their resignations to Mr. Arafat in Tunis, where the PLO has its headquarters, said Haidar Abdel-Shafi, the head of the delegation.[Israeli radio reported today that the entire delegation had been summoned to Tunis to discuss the matter.

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Arab foreign ministers are expected to decide here today to delay the next round of peace negotiations with Israel at least a week beyond the Tuesday date set by President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, according to Arab diplomats and sources close to the deliberations in Syria.Palestinian officials, who have been pushing for a delay in the Middle East peace talks until after Israel offers more concessions, said their Arab counterparts had agreed to a one-week delay in the resumption of the 18-month-old negotiations in Washington.

GAZA CITY -- First reports emerging from the Palestinian Authority's closed trials of Islamic militants indicate that tribunals are handing down summary verdicts after short court proceedings, some no longer than a few minutes.In the last month, more than a dozen Palestinians have been sentenced in the authority's newly formed State Security Court to prison terms ranging from one year to life for crimes from possession of illegal weapons to inciting suicide attacks.The trials began April 10, a day after two suicide bombings in the Gaza Strip killed seven Israeli soldiers and an American college student.

JERUSALEM -- Israel accused Syria yesterday of supporting a new wave of guerrilla attacks on Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, and senior officials warned that they would not let the Middle East peace talks deter them from retaliating.While the Israeli Cabinet was reported to have made no decision on military action at its weekly meeting yesterday, several ministers suggested that steps might be taken soon. News reports from Lebanon said that Israel had moved extra artillery into southern Lebanon and that guerrillas there loyal to the pro-Iranian Party of God, or Hezbollah, were bracing for bombardments.

Ill with cancer and facing up to his mortality, Jordan's King Hussein is zagging where he zigged. He suggested in recent interviews and a speech to his people that the dictator Saddam Hussein (no kin) had outlived his usefulness to the Iraqi people. Only two years ago, King Hussein upset his patrons and admirers in this country by making common cause with Saddam Hussein against the U.S. He denounced the gulf war. Violating economic sanctions on Iraq was Jordan's best industry.In reversing course, at least rhetorically, King Hussein has not come to his senses.

PARIS -- With the next round of Middle East peace talks scheduled to start tomorrow in Moscow, the Palestinian leadership is debating whether it will participate in the negotiations or hold out for broader Palestinian representation.Senior officials at the Tunis headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization said the group's executive committee was meeting in Tunis last night to weigh the merits of Palestinian attendance at the so-called multilateral round of talks, in which more than 30 nations were to be represented.

President Clinton's pre-inaugural appointments to the State Department display some hasty staffing and some good staffing but hardly a foreign policy up and running. They imply a new toughness with China on behalf of human rights, but continuity with Bush initiatives toward Middle East peace. Beyond that, they show indecision over Cuba and ad hoc approaches elsewhere.Winston Lord, who will become assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, was a Reagan era ambassador to China who condemned President Bush's granting of most-favored nation status for the hardline Beijing regime that massacred human rights demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989.