Mubarak-Arafat Talks End; No Compromise

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, concluded a third round of talks Tuesday without bridging a rift between the PLO and Jordan that is threatening to break up a Mideast peace effort.

Mubarak, acknowledging that the two sides are still far apart, told reporters after a final 90-minute meeting with Arafat that “matters of destiny” are at stake and that resolving the differences over them will “require give and take for a long time” to come.

He said that King Hussein, who apparently showed no signs of further compromise in talks with a senior Egyptian official sent by Mubarak to the Jordanian capital Monday, is now the “cornerstone in the problem.”

But “contacts are continuing” between Arafat and Hussein, he said, adding that high-level discussions will be resumed in Jordan within the next few days. “The PLO,” he said, “is still on the path of peace, and the negotiations are not over.”

The current crisis in the long and tortuous peace process is said to center on Hussein’s anger over Arafat’s refusal to accept unconditionally U.N. resolutions 242 and 338, which implicitly recognize the existence of Israel but speak of the Palestinians only as refugees without endorsing their demands for statehood.

Hussein, frustrated by numerous delays and setbacks in the peace process since he and Arafat proposed a joint peace initiative a year ago, has been pressuring the PLO chairman to accept publicly the two U.N. resolutions--a gesture that would overcome the principal U.S. objection to talking with the PLO.

Given his precarious position within the splintered PLO, Arafat has been reluctant to do this without reciprocal assurances that the United States will endorse the Palestinians’ right to “self-determination,” a kind of code word for statehood.

Two weeks of talks between Hussein and Arafat seeking a way around this dilemma ended in failure early this month. Arafat offered Hussein three secret proposals to relay to the United States, but the king reportedly rejected them as inadequate.

Hussein, urging the PLO to make additional concessions, was so displeased with Arafat’s refusal to show more flexibility that senior Jordanian officials pronounced the peace process at an end.

Arafat then turned to Egypt, which has sought to mediate the Jordanian-PLO rift and to help draft a compromise proposal acceptable to both Hussein and the United States.

Washington, for its part, tried last week to keep the peace process alive by issuing a statement acknowledging that the Palestinian issue “is more than a refugee question” and affirming that future peace negotiations must have the “prior consent” of the Palestinians and take into account their “legitimate rights.”

Arafat called the statement a positive step but indicated that it fell short of the quid pro quo he is seeking in return for recognizing Israel.

Meeting with a group of senior Egyptian newspaper editors Monday night, Arafat, according to one participant, complained that Washington “is asking me to do a striptease.”

“They are asking me for everything and offering nothing,” he said. “They are not even leaving me with a fig leaf.”