With Talks Stalled, U.S. Peace Envoy Departs Mideast

After two weeks of intensive diplomacy aimed at forging an agreement on the pullout of Israeli troops from the West Bank city of Hebron, Dennis Ross, the U.S. Middle East peace envoy, left for Washington on Monday--without an accord.

Ross, sent to the region by President Clinton in an effort to revitalize the faltering peace process, tried to put a positive face on his departure, telling reporters that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement could be reached “relatively soon.”

He said the two sides were making progress on the main sticking point, the long-delayed Israeli withdrawal from Hebron, the last major West Bank community scheduled to be turned over to Palestinian control.

“We made progress this week,” Ross said before his departure. “I think there were hopes that we could finalize [an agreement] in some areas. That didn’t materialize. It doesn’t mean we can’t press ahead and reach agreement as soon as possible.”

Israeli and Palestinian officials stopped short of calling the situation a crisis but said the discussions had reached at least a temporary impasse, raising concern that frustration over the lack of progress could lead once again to violence.

Ross was dispatched after Clinton convened an emergency White House summit aimed at jump-starting the peace process and ending outbreaks of violence such as the clashes last month that left more than 75 people dead in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Each side blamed the other for the latest delays.

“The Palestinians just decided to shift into neutral,” said Moshe Fogel, spokesman for the Israeli negotiators. “It looks like we’re all waiting for a political decision on [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat’s part.”

Israeli officials have said they believe Arafat wants to delay the agreement until after the U.S. presidential election in hopes that a new administration--Democrat or Republican--will be willing to exert more pressure on Israel.

“These are tiny, minute differences that can be tied up in three minutes flat if the Palestinians wished to do so,” said David Bar-Illan, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Palestinians have denied that they are stalling. Marwan Kanafani, a political advisor to Arafat, said the slow negotiating resulted from Israeli intransigence on issues relating to planning and zoning in Hebron once Israel’s troop redeployment occurs.

Arafat was not to blame, he said: “He wants an agreement. I promise you he wants an agreement.”

The issue of Hebron, a volatile West Bank city of about 100,000 residents, has proved the most difficult in the current stage of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Israel was scheduled to withdraw its forces from most of the city in March but delayed the pullout after a series of deadly suicide bombings by Muslim extremists in February and March killed more than 60 people. After Netanyahu’s election in May, the withdrawal was pushed back still further. Netanyahu said he wanted to reopen the redeployment agreement, signed in May 1995, in order to increase security arrangements for about 450 Jewish settlers who live in the overwhelmingly Arab city.

The Palestinians have said there is no need to renegotiate the agreement. They say the existing accord will meet the security needs of all of Hebron’s residents, Jews and Arabs.

At a news conference, Ross said the talks will go forward and that the United States will continue to be represented in the sessions by American Ambassador Martin Indyk and Edward Abington Jr., the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem. But he said the talks had reached a technical level where his day-to-day involvement was unnecessary.

Ross denied reports that he had issued an ultimatum to the two sides Sunday, threatening to leave if significant progress was not made. He declined to predict when an agreement might be reached and did not specify when he might return to the region, saying only that he will be back when “the time is right.”

In Washington, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Ross could return quickly if needed.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns predicted that the talks ultimately will succeed.

“But they’re tough talks, and despite all the positive predictions in the Israeli press . . . they’ve still got a ways to go,” Burns said.

Sources said the two sides had appeared on the verge of reaching an agreement late Sunday, with relatively few differences unsettled. But Israel’s insistence on construction limitations and zoning rules aimed at providing more security for Hebron’s Jewish settlers led to a hardening of the Palestinian position.

Palestinian officials said that substantive, overall progress might not be made until Arafat and Netanyahu meet to resolve the remaining differences.

Even as Ross departed, and amid reports late Monday that the Palestinians had staged a walkout from the peace talks of undetermined length and seriousness, a new would-be peacemaker arrived. French President Jacques Chirac flew in for three days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders intended to heighten France’s profile in the peace process.

But Chirac almost immediately repeated France’s positions on Mideast peace, including stands rejected by the Netanyahu government.