Yitzhak Shamir

The Bush Administration dismissed Israel's complaints about the U.S. decision to convene Arab-Israeli peace talks in Washington, saying Monday that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has no grounds to feel slighted and expressing confidence that the talks can still begin on schedule next week. But the U.S.-Israeli argument over the talks' format escalated, with the Israelis complaining that Secretary of State James A. Baker III is trying to "dictate the agenda" of the meeting.

Members of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's government Sunday assailed the Bush Administration for scheduling the next round of Middle East peace talks before Shamir had a chance to talk with Bush about where they should take place. The heated outbursts reflected underlying nervousness about the role of the United States in the coming face-to-face talks between Israel and its closest Arab neighbors.

The Hebrew surname that Yitzhak Shamir adopted on his arrival from his native Poland in what was then British-ruled Palestine, in 1935, is taken from a type of Biblical stone noted for being so hard it would cut other stones. It's a name that seems particularly fitting for the stocky, square-shouldered, Israeli Prime Minister who has spent nearly all his 75 years in pursuit of what he sees as the supreme interests of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

Conceding that the decision fully satisfied no one, the Bush Administration on Friday called on Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians to resume the Middle East peace talks Dec. 4 in Washington. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, in consultation with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, picked the time and place after determining that the parties would be unable to reach agreement among themselves.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir discussed the next phase of Middle East peace negotiations with Secretary of State James A. Baker III on Thursday after delivering an unyielding speech in which he said his government's security requires it to retain its hold on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, ending a four-day visit to Los Angeles, said Monday that a "slight crack in the gateway to peace" has opened in the Middle East and that he plans to discuss with President Bush the issue of bilateral peace negotiations with Israel's Arab neighbors. Shamir, who is scheduled to meet with Bush and Secretary of State James A.

Speaking in Los Angeles during his first trip to the United States since the Madrid peace conference three weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir pledged Sunday to work for peace in the Middle East but said Israel's annexation of Arab East Jerusalem and other occupied territory was not open to negotiation. "Jerusalem is one city, united, never to be divided again," Shamir said at the Stephen S. Wise Temple in Bel-Air.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir arrived in Los Angeles Friday to begin a 10-day visit to the United States to promote economic ties and discuss the historic peace process in the Middle East.

Leaders of Judaism's Reform movement said Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir deserves to be honored with an honorary degree in Los Angeles this weekend despite protests from a group of Southern California rabbis. Thirty-two Reform rabbis have said the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion was dishonoring itself because Shamir has proven incapable of making "even modest proposals" for Middle East peace. In response, Rabbi Alexander M.

Graduates of a rabbinical seminary that is scheduled to award an honorary doctorate this weekend to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Los Angeles have denounced him as a former terrorist incapable of making even the smallest concessions for peace.