Clinton Remains a Constant in Mideast Summit

The differences could not be greater between the current Middle East summit in Washington and the euphoric meeting of Arab and Israeli leaders here three years ago that launched the now-troubled peace process.

The earlier one was a celebration that floated on a giddy feeling of hope and success. This week’s meeting is spattered in blood and spawned by despair.

The first was a sun-splashed media event that unfolded on the White House South Lawn and was crowned by the handshake between old enemies. This time participants met warily, far from public view, in the ground floor White House library that once served as a laundry room. Only sketchy information of events was available to journalists.

Yet for all the depth of these differences, there is one significant constant: President Clinton again stands in the middle, a powerful host, trying to nudge old enemies to talk, not fight.

Although aides characterize Clinton’s decision to convene the meeting as a high-risk move in the heat of an election campaign, there is, in fact, little for Clinton to lose and, at least potentially, much for him to gain.

To be sure, he is unlikely to match the political bounce he won from coaxing the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to grip the extended hand of his country’s once-bitter adversary, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

But merely braking the slide toward chaos would seem to be enough to declare the summit worthwhile and add to Clinton’s prestige as a president engaged in defusing world problems.

Even if the current talks collapse in recrimination and the participants go home with nothing but new acrimony, the danger to Clinton seems minimal, analysts said.

“The risks are in the region and to the peace process, and they are real. But the risk for Clinton isn’t that great,” said William Quandt, professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia and a Middle East specialist who served on the National Security Council during the Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter years. “The worst that can happen is that the Middle East stays on the boil, and that isn’t going to be disastrous for Clinton.”

Also, expectations for this crisis summit are low. They have been kept that way by Clinton’s staff to minimize his political exposure and make any achievement, however modest, look more momentous. Managing to get Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet over a three-hour lunch Tuesday was enough to fulfill the White House’s minimalist definition of success.

“In our view, it was very, very fundamental to this process to see if we could not get these two leaders to reengage to begin to address the substance that divides them, and we believe we’ve made a positive step in that direction today,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Tuesday.

As Clinton met with the Middle East leaders, Republican challenger Bob Dole charged from the sidelines that the White House session was nothing more than a “photo op.”

In a statement, Dole declared: “Our friend Israel must not be asked to make concessions as a means of restoring order.”

At his White House news briefing, McCurry initially declined to respond to Dole, then declared: “I can understand [Dole’s] frustration in wanting to try to make some news today, but I’ll leave his comments and try to stay focused on the work the president’s doing.”

Clinton’s role is one of the few constants that run through the two summits.

The new Israeli leader, Netanyahu, is a reluctant, deeply suspicious supporter of the peace process launched by Rabin three years ago, and his relationship with Arafat, who is president of the Palestinian Authority, was virtually nonexistent before Tuesday’s meeting.

For Arafat, embarrassed by the slow pace of implementing the agreement that is aimed at giving Palestinians greater autonomy, even showing up for Tuesday’s meeting was politically difficult. It was made even harder when Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak decided not to come, apparently concerned that the meetings could fail.

By contrast, the 1993 summit was a major triumph for the Palestinian leader, a public acknowledgment of his position as a major political figure. He was received by an American president and secretary of state for the first time and even appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

The mood differed Tuesday on the streets of Washington too.

Jewish American and Arab American groups demonstrated throughout the day. One demonstration was a joint project of two Arab and two Jewish groups--the Arab-American Institute, the Palestinian American Congress, Project Nishma and Americans for Peace Now--that called for a rejuvenation of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.