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Palestinian negotiators harshly attack US role in peace talks

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January 24, 2001 

JERUSALEM-- (AP) - U.S. mediation between Israelis and Palestinians was marked by "mistakes and failures" over the past seven years and was marred by a clear pro-Israel bias, the Palestinian negotiating team said in an unprecedented attack on former U.S. President Bill Clinton's Mideast policy.

The statement did not criticize Clinton directly, but singled out his Mideast envoy, Dennis Ross, who has spent hundreds of hours shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.

Ross and other members of his team "have acknowledged having an emotional commitment to Israel and have said they cannot distinguish between their personal and professional involvement with it," the statement said.

It was not clear how the criticism would affect the Palestinians' ties with the new administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. While Clinton was still in office, the Palestinians were careful not to make their misgivings public.

The statement said that under Clinton, U.S. policy in the Mideast emphasized the process of making peace over substance. A key U.S. objective was to help Israel normalize its relations with the Arab world, without forcing the Jewish state to make the concessions required to reach a peace accord with the Palestinians, the statement said.

"This lack of implementation, combined with the ever-increasing number of Palestinian-Israeli agreements brokered by the United States, has caused Palestinians to become increasingly wary of U.S. involvement in a process that has brought some normalcy to Israel, but none to the Palestinians," the statement said.

The negotiating team said, without naming the Bush administration directly, that the United States can contribute to Mideast peace efforts, "but only if it can learn from the mistakes and failures of the last seven years."