Taba Dispute Still Blocking Israeli-Egyptian Summit

Egyptian and Israeli negotiators, working against the clock to salvage a planned summit between President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, met for nine hours Tuesday but failed to resolve their differences over a tiny strip of Red Sea beachfront called Taba.

After a day of intensive and at times dramatic discussions, which Israel at one point seemed on the verge of curtailing by threatening to call its negotiators home, the two sides agreed to meet again today for what is expected to be a final, make-or-break session.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy flew back to Cairo from Saudi Arabia in an effort to help the two sides conclude the 16-month-old, American-mediated talks with an agreement to submit the Taba border dispute to international arbitration.

Murphy met for an hour with the Israeli delegation but did not take part in any of the three Egyptian-Israeli negotiating sessions held during the day.

Two technical but troublesome disagreements held up a settlement, which Egypt has made a precondition for a summit meeting and other steps to thaw the “cold peace” that has characterized relations between the two Camp David peace partners over the last four years.

Hopes for a settlement rose last month, when the two sides announced, at the end of an earlier Murphy visit to the Middle East, that they had reached an agreement on the main principles of a Taba accord.

A Mubarak-Peres meeting, the first Egyptian-Israeli summit in five years, had been tentatively set for today, pending resolution of two key points--the demarcation of disputed border stones and the choice of three neutral arbitrators.

But these two points, though highly technical, have proven to be seemingly intractable. After the final round of talks Tuesday night, both sides indicated that both points were far from being resolved, although there were differing assessments of how much, if any, progress had been made.

David Kimche, co-leader of the Israeli delegation, said, “We have made progress, but we haven’t yet finished.” He said the two sides will meet again today but refused to elaborate.

However, asked what progress had been achieved, Nabil Araby, the head of the Egyptian delegation, tersely told reporters: “If there had been progress, we would have had an agreement.” Asked if he thought a summit could still be held, he said, “I have no comment on that” and then abruptly turned away.

Talks Called ‘Useful’

Egyptian Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid, who intervened in the talks and chaired the final session Tuesday night at the request of the deadlocked delegations, said that a “good spirit” prevailed and that the talks were “useful.” However, he said there was still no agreement on either the demarcation dispute or on the choice of the arbitrators.

Israeli sources portrayed the demarcation issue as the main stumbling block to concluding the negotiations over Taba, a 250-acre beachfront resort that Israel retained when it withdrew from the rest of the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. They predicted that the question of selecting the arbitrators will “fall into place” once the demarcation issue is resolved.

Abdel Meguid added that if both points are resolved today, the summit, which is now scheduled for Thursday and Friday in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, could follow “immediately.”

Timing is considered to be a principal factor now because Peres is scheduled to visit the United States next week. He steps down as prime minister next month and trades jobs with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir in a scheduled rotation within Israel’s coalition government.

Although U.S. sources have indicated that the summit could conceivably be held after Peres returns from Washington, there is a pervasive feeling on both sides that this week represents the last chance for the two leaders to meet before the rotation.

“The differences are so seemingly small and have been argued over for so long that if they can’t resolve them now, it is unlikely that they will resolve them at all,” one source close to the negotiations said.

Egypt, for its part, is understood not to want a summit after Shamir takes over. It fears that the hard-line policies he is likely to pursue concerning peace negotiations and the territories Israel occupied in the 1967 and 1973 Mideast wars will prove to be intensely embarrassing to the Mubarak government.

Indeed, as the rotation deadline approaches, some senior Egyptian officials have privately expressed doubts about whether a summit should be held at all.

“What good is it to thaw the cold peace now when relations are probably going to drop into the deep freeze when Shamir takes over?” one senior official asked.