Clinton Casts Summit as Peace vs. Terrorism

President Clinton on Friday challenged the leaders of Arab governments to choose between peace and terrorism, as plans moved ahead for next week’s “summit of the peacemakers” to establish a worldwide common front against Islamic suicide bombers.

Joined by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Clinton invited 30 world leaders to a day of talks Wednesday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik on the Red Sea, hoping to revive the beleaguered Middle East peace process after four suicide bombers killed 57 people in Israel in the last two weeks.

U.S. officials said they do not yet know how many leaders will attend.

On Friday, the leaders of Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian self-governing authority announced that they will join Clinton and Mubarak. More acceptances are expected over the weekend.

In a message directed to any Arab governments that may be wavering, Clinton issued a direct challenge: “The dividing line today is between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it, between those who look to the future and those who are locked in the past, between those who open their arms and those who still clench their fists. Each of us must decide which side of the line we are on.”

Expected to be far more an exercise in global theater than a working conference, the summit is intended to send separate but interlocking messages to the Israeli and Palestinian publics and to the Hamas organization that has claimed responsibility for the carnage.

To the Israelis, the message is simple: Stay the course. Continue talking peace with your neighbors and you will not be alone.

To the Palestinians, who this week convened their first elected legislative council, the message is: Don’t let terrorists hijack progress toward the independence for which you have been fighting for more than four decades.

And to Hamas: You are totally isolated. Even your former friends are turning against you.

But the meeting is a high-stakes gamble for Clinton because--despite White House efforts to stage-manage the event--there is no guarantee that it will send the signals that Washington wants.

*

The most important question is the extent of Arab participation.

Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians happily signed up at once. And a senior administration official said Tunisia, Qatar, Bahrain and perhaps Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states may take part.

But no one knows whether Syria and Lebanon will be there. Iraq and Libya were not invited.

Without a substantial Arab turnout, the impact on all three primary audiences will be blunted.

Although many of the most powerful Western nations have announced that their presidents or prime ministers will attend, the extent of Arab participation will be crucial--especially to the Israelis, who have long yearned for political recognition from their neighbors, and to Hamas, which could lose its claim that it acts on behalf of Arabs and Muslims.

In an effort to encourage Arab participation, Secretary of State Warren Christopher telephoned Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh on Friday, and he planned to talk to other Arab leaders over the weekend.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns declined to characterize Shareh’s response.

Even if some Arab leaders stay home, the meeting in a scuba-diving resort on the tip of the Sinai Peninsula is unprecedented. Never before have Arab and Israeli chiefs of government met to discuss such a controversial topic as terrorism against Israel.

Burns said the meeting has three primary purposes: “First is to have Arabs stand with [Israeli] Prime Minister [Shimon] Peres, with the United States, with Russia, with our European allies, to send a dramatic and powerful signal of opposition to Hamas and opposition to terrorism. . . . Secondly, to discuss ways to combat terrorism effectively in the Middle East. And third, to maintain and build support for the peace negotiations that have been underway between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and Syria, and Israel and Lebanon.”

Burns acknowledged that it is unlikely the summit will develop detailed, tactical measures to thwart terrorist bombings. But, he said, the talks could help “choke off support--financial support and political support--for Hamas from wherever that support comes.”

*

For the White House managers, the central task may be to keep the conference focused on the deadly bombs that Islamic militants detonated on two Jerusalem buses, a soldiers’ hitchhiking stand in Ashkelon and a shopping center in Tel Aviv. U.S. officials clearly do not want the one-day conference to range over other issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“If the agenda is focused on Hamas and Iran and Sudan and others who support Hamas, then I think it could help,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a former White House expert on the Middle East. “But if there is an effort to balance the discussion, for instance by talking about Jewish extremists, then it will fall flat and I don’t think it will help at all.”

For the administration, an unstated objective of the meeting is to rescue the tattered political careers of Peres and Arafat. The spate of bombings has turned Israeli public opinion sharply against the peace process, which Peres has spent much of his career supporting. The prime minister has gone from being the odds-on favorite in Israel’s May 29 election to being a candidate struggling to save his political life.

Arafat too has suffered politically from the bombings. Israelis have denounced Arafat and his Palestinian police force for their inability to control Hamas. And Israeli troops have sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a collective punishment that has hit ordinary Palestinians hard and set them to grumbling about the inability of their new government to do anything about it.

*

In Jerusalem, Yigal Carmon, a former terrorism advisor to the Israeli government, said the meeting will have very little to do with countering terrorism.

“This is a political hostage rescue team for Peres and Arafat,” he said.

Carmon said the only way to defeat the terrorists is through joint efforts by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, “and we are still a long way from that.”

A U.N. official in the Gaza Strip said the meeting will be “a major step toward pulling the peace process out of crisis. Some Palestinian leaders are trying to pull the rug out from under Arafat, and this summit gives him some political backing. It also gives Israel backing for its security measures. Politically, it will help them both.”

*

Clinton plans to arrive in Sharm el Sheik early Wednesday morning. That night he is scheduled to fly to Jerusalem to prepare for meetings Thursday with Israeli officials.

Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak said Clinton will address the Israeli parliament, visit hospitalized victims of the bombs, pay his respects at the grave of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and call on Rabin’s widow, Leah.

Israeli and American officials are also drafting a memo of understanding that Clinton and Peres will sign, launching a coordinated U.S.-Israel counter-terrorism effort. Details have not been completed, but Israeli officials said the plan will call for Washington to increase intelligence-sharing with Israel and step up the flow of anti-terrorism equipment.

Also Friday, Palestinian police arrested Mahmud Zahar, head of the political wing of Hamas. And in the West Bank village of Burqa, north of the Palestinian-controlled city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers used 45 pounds of explosives to destroy the rented family home of Rayid Sharnobi, who detonated the bomb on a Jerusalem bus last Sunday that killed him and 18 others.

Times staff writer Scott Kraft in Jerusalem contributed to this report.