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Israeli - Palestinian settlement by mid-September |
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June 14, 2000
WASHINGTON, (AP) - With a White House admonition that "time is short," Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are resuming their sputtering talks on an overall settlement that their governments pledged to conclude by mid-September.
It is supposed to determine the future of Jerusalem and how much land Israel will cede to the Palestinians for a state. Refugee and water problems also were on the agenda for the talks beginning Tuesday at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland and at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. While negotiators at one site wrestle with long-range issues, the other negotiators will consider how much land Israel will surrender in a West Bank pullback due this month. A more aggressive U.S. role was expected, as the two sides have not even begun official discussions about Jerusalem, part of which Yasser Arafat is demanding as a capital for his Palestinian state, and have made little headway on other thorny issues.
The talks broke down two weeks ago amid violence on the West Bank.
American mediator Aaron Miller was due at the table. Last week, after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in Jerusalem and Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said they wanted the United States to "call audibles" - a reference to football quarterbacks calling plays at the line of scrimmage.
But as she headed Monday for Damascus and the funeral of Syrian President Hafez Assad, whose own negotiations with Israel were mired in disagreement despite a Barak offer to surrender virtually all the Golan Heights, Albright said she did not expect a breakthrough now.
"The issues are difficult and complex and will take time to resolve," she said. President Bill Clinton's message to the negotiators, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Monday, is that "time is short. We're at a critical moment in this process, and all the parties need to understand the importance of working together to bridge these remaining differences, as difficult as they are."
Barak is trying to prepare the Israeli people for more concessions to Arafat. He has already offered suburbs of Jerusalem and said he would carry out this month's promised pullback on the West Bank.
Both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have accused the other of foot-dragging.
Barak faces severe political problems at home, with opponents trying to force new elections.
Arafat was attending Assad's funeral Tuesday and delayed until Thursday a scheduled Washington meeting with Clinton.
Clinton and Albright have publicly expressed their support for Palestinian "aspirations," without specifying what they thought Israel should do.
At a pre-departure news conference, Albright appealed to Syria to become part of the Middle East peace process and said she hoped to meet with Bashar Assad while attending the funeral of his father. "I expect to, and they are working on details," Albright told reporters.
At the same time, she said, "It's essential for Syria to be a part of a regional solution in the Middle East that we've all been looking for, a way that the whole region can prosper with Israel as an integral part of it. And that's what I hope will happen."
Clinton and Albright praised Assad on his death Saturday as being committed to peace with Israel. Asked whether the laurels and her attendance at the funeral were consistent with U.S. policy on human rights and terrorism, considering that Syria is on the State Department's list of terror-exporting states, Albright replied: "I think that it's totally appropriate that we pay our respects to a historic figure and that we express our condolences to the people of Syria. There is no question that we need to work with the Syrian leadership in order to accomplish a comprehensive peace." Meanwhile, the Middle East Media Research Institute, a private group, distributed an interview that Bashar Assad, heir apparent to his father, gave to an Egyptian weekly.
In it, Bashar Assad called Israel an enemy and said its withdrawal from southern Lebanon was "the beginning of a new Arab history that will remind (people of) honorable pages of our Arab history that abound with victories over invaders and occupiers." "This victory proves once again that the option of force is capable of imposing a new situation ... of forcing the occupier to withdraw using the weapon of force if the enemy does not respond to the voice of reason," he was quoted as saying.
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