MIDEAST PEACE TALKS RESUME : NEGOTIATIONS FOCUS ON HEBRON TRANSFER.

Byline: Serge Schmemann The New York Times

Spurred on by Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Israelis and Palestinians sat down Sunday to the urgent negotiations they agreed to launch at last week's summit meeting in Washington in an effort to salvage their peace after the recent gunbattles in the West Bank and Gaza.

The central focus of the talks was to reach agreement as soon as possible on turning over control of most of the West Bank city of Hebron to the Palestinians.

The long-delayed transfer has evolved into a litmus test of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's intentions toward the Palestinian peace. But the fact that Palestinian police officers used their weapons against Israelis in the violence has made Netanyahu determined to strengthen the security arrangements for the Jewish enclaves in the heart of Hebron, the last of seven West Bank cities to come under Palestinian self-rule under a 1995 agreement. The transfer originally had been scheduled for March, but was suspended after a series of Palestinian bombings in Israel.

The talks that opened Sunday were officially negotiations that had been agreed on last month and delayed by the shootings. But the prominent presence at the negotiating table of Christopher's chief Mideast coordinator, Dennis Ross, and Christopher's own meetings with Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, made clear that the United States was now determined to press for quick and tangible results.

``The recent violence has demonstrated the great urgency of reaching some concrete results just as soon as possible,'' Christopher told reporters after meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem. ``The situation has eased somewhat, but it is still a dangerous situation,'' he said two hours later after meeting Arafat in the Gaza Strip.

Christopher, Netanyahu and Arafat did not attend the opening session of the negotiations, which was held at Erez on the Israeli-Gaza border.

The 2-1/2-hour session was described as largely organizational, and upon its conclusion the chief negotiators - Said Erekat on the Palestinian side and Dan Shomron on the Israeli - said they had agreed to set up three subcommittees: on Hebron, on security and on economic issues.

Israel also announced some easing of the security cordon thrown around Palestinian areas after the recent violence. They said 2,000 Gazan workers would be allowed into the Israeli-controlled Erez industrial zone today, and the blockades around two West Bank towns, Tulkarem and Jenin, would be eased.

But the two sides could not decide where to continue the negotiations. The plan agreed to in Washington was to retire to a secluded spot for continual talks, but Israel was reportedly against the Palestinians' first choice, the Egyptian resort of Taba, near the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat.

Both the negotiators and senior American officials made clear that the major hurdle would be to find a way of satisfying the conservative Israeli government's demands for more stringent security arrangements for Jewish settlers in Hebron while meeting the Palestinians' insistence that the existing agreements not be reopened or renegotiated.

Accordingly, at his joint news conference Sunday with Christopher, Netanyahu said: ``We did not propose opening the agreement. We suggested that within the confines of the existing agreement, adjustments be made.''

Christopher stressed the same point: ``One of the things that has been clarified during my visit here is that the parties intend to negotiate within the four corners of the agreement. They do not seek to modify it.''

The question was how much ``adjusting'' Arafat was prepared to accept, since the new Israeli plan, as reported in the Israeli press, demanded substantial changes, including the arming of Palestinian police in Hebron only with sidearms, new buffer zones around Jewish enclaves, and the right of Israeli soldiers to pursue Palestinians anywhere in the city.

Appearing later with Christopher, Arafat avoided commenting on the issues to be negotiated. But the chief Palestinian negotiator, Erekat, firmly declared on going into the meeting, ``We will not renegotiate the agreements signed, we will not reopen the agreement for any modifications or amendments.'' Only the ``implementation'' can be discussed, Erekat said.

Dore Gold, Netanyahu's foreign-policy adviser, was equally firm in declaring that ``without reopening the agreement, a lot can be changed.''

Senior American officials expressed satisfaction that Netanyahu had given a public assurance that existing agreements would not be renegotiated.