Outraged Clinton Summons PLO, Israel for Talks

In a dramatic bid to prevent the Hebron massacre from destroying the Middle East peace process, President Clinton on Friday summoned Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to Washington for nonstop talks until they complete an agreement on limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Clinton, who called the slayings “a gross act of murder,” has been wary of hands-on participation in the volatile Arab-Israeli negotiations throughout his 13-month tenure. But he threw his own prestige behind a demand for results at the bargaining table after learning of the blood-spattered scene in Hebron’s Ibrahim Mosque, where an American-born Israeli doctor killed 48 Muslim worshipers in a fusillade of automatic weapon fire.

Asserting that the killer’s objective was to derail the delicate negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Clinton called for redoubled efforts to complete the troublesome details blocking implementation of the self-rule accord signed with such fanfare on the White House lawn last September. He said that would be the best way to thwart the anti-peace extremists in both the Jewish and Arab communities.

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who earlier in the day threatened to pull out of the talks to protest the killings, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin immediately agreed to send their delegates to Washington for negotiations beginning next week.

“On behalf of the American people, I condemn this crime in the strongest possible terms,” Clinton said. “I am outraged and saddened that such a gross act of murder could be perpetrated, and I extend my deepest sympathies to the families of those who have been killed and wounded.

“Extremists on both sides are determined to drag Arabs and Israelis back into the darkness of unending conflict and bloodshed,” he added. “We must prevent them from extinguishing the hopes and the visions and the aspirations of ordinary people for a life of peaceful existence.”

Israeli and PLO negotiators have been haggling over the fine print of Palestinian self-government since they signed their broad general agreement in September. The talks have been taking place in Cairo, Oslo, the Sinai resort of Taba and a variety of other venues. According to both camps, agreement is close, but final details have proven difficult.

The United States generally has kept its distance from the negotiations, in part at least because Secretary of State Warren Christopher considers the September pact to be so loosely drawn that it amounts to a legal minefield.

But in the wake of the Hebron killings, Administration officials concluded that an arm’s-length attitude was no longer good enough.

“The parties have, in discussion with us, agreed that it would be helpful to move these discussions here, for the United States to play a role that . . . at this point (is) somewhat undefined, but at least to use our offices and our facilities here to try to help the parties make progress,” State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said.

He said that more active U.S. participation “might change a bit of the dynamics.”

A senior Administration official, briefing reporters at the White House, said the United States decided to step in to make it easier for Rabin and Arafat to persuade the Israeli and Palestinian publics of the need to keep negotiating despite the killings.

“You needed to have a kind of focal point for these negotiations that both the prime minister and the chairman could respond to, so that the focus could again be on negotiations and not just on the consequences of this event,” the official said.

The Israeli-PLO talks on the details of self-government are separate from the broad Israeli-Arab negotiations that have been going on in Washington for more than two years.

The September agreement called on Israel and the PLO to complete their negotiations in time to begin Palestinian self-government by last Dec. 13. But as that date came and went, Rabin asserted that it was more important to tie down all loose ends than it was to meet an artificial deadline.

On Friday, however, Israeli Ambassador Itamar Rabinovitch said speed was now very important to head off further violence.

“This was an act meant to derail the peace process,” Rabinovitch told a news conference. “It only reinforces our determination not only to keep to the peace process but to expedite it and to accelerate it. There is no comfort and consolation in this, but even such a tragic event can be the catalyst for movement toward agreement and toward finding a political solution to what has always been and remains to be a very violent and a very tragic conflict.”

In his statement at the White House, Clinton described the killer as a lone madman. And he praised the Israeli government for its handling of the aftermath of the murders.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called on Israeli authorities “to take all necessary measures to ensure that settlers refrain from such criminal acts.”

Boutros-Ghali appealed for calm, noting that he was “deeply concerned by the unrest generated in the occupied territories . . . and the impact that this may have on negotiations between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the government of Israel.”