PERES SAYS HE PLANS LIMITED HEBRON PULLOUT.

Byline: Serge Schmemann The New York Times

Prime Minister Shimon Peres announced Friday that he intended to ``coordinate'' a limited Israeli withdrawal from Hebron with the Palestinian Authority, but set no firm date for pulling out of the last West Bank city to remain under Israeli occupation.

The announcement was issued after Peres held a special meeting on Hebron with his senior security officers, and it suggested that the prime minister had decided to postpone a full withdrawal from Hebron until after the May 29 national election. Even after the full withdrawal, some Israeli troops will remain to protect the Jewish settlements in Hebron.

Officials said that the government would probably take some immediate steps to satisfy Peres' pledge to the Palestinians that he intended to pull out, but that the bulk of the Israeli force would remain through the election.

Under the Israeli-Palestinian agreement signed in September, Israel committed itself to withdraw from Hebron by March 20. But Peres canceled the pullout after a series of suicide bombings in early March.

He later said that the withdrawal depended on a vote by the Palestine National Council to rid its guiding charter of calls for Israel's destruction, which the council did last week.

But tensions rose anew in Hebron on Wednesday when an Israeli settler was stabbed and seriously wounded in the Hebron market, and settlers vowed to launch a campaign of demonstrations against the planned withdrawal.

A statement after Friday's meeting said Peres was ``committed to the decision on the redeployment of the Israeli Army in Hebron.'' It also said the government would ``coordinate the manner in which the redeployment is to be carried out with the Palestinian Authority.''

Deputy Defense Minister Ori Orr said after the meeting that ``no date has been set.''

Israeli press reports said that the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, had indicated to U.S. officials in Washington that he did not expect an Israeli withdrawal until after the election.

Like the Israeli government, Arafat has made it a clear priority to ensure Peres' re-election May 29, on the presumption that a victory by the conservative Likud Party would derail the entire disengagement process.

New public opinion surveys published Friday showed Peres holding a five-point lead over the Likud candidate, Benjamin Netanyahu, roughly the margin he has held for several weeks now.

Labor leaders fear that any new security crisis, such as a terrorist attack, could erase that lead, and they have taken extensive measures to preclude either attacks or confrontations with the right wing.

Despite Arafat's reported concurrence in the Hebron delay, other Palestinian leaders have criticized Israel for adding conditions that were not in the agreement, and then disregarding these as well.

On Sunday, Israeli and Palestinian officials are to meet in Taba, an Egyptian resort adjacent to south Israel, to formally open the third and final stage of Israeli-Palestinian political negotiations envisioned when the two sides formally put an end to hostility and agreed to seek peace in September 1993.

The final settlement talks are to tackle the most sensitive issues dividing the two sides, including the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees still living abroad, the fate of Jerusalem and the shape and organization of a future Palestinian country.

But with the fate of the entire process dependent on the outcome of the Israeli election, the opening session was expected to be largely a formality.