Gaps Remain After Albright Mideast Talks

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright voiced frustration Sunday with the months-long stalemate in Middle East peace negotiations, admitting that her latest talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders had produced only “minimal progress” toward bridging the gaps.

Albright, who stopped here as part of a diplomatic tour to rally support for a tough U.S. response to Iraq, said Israel and the Palestinians did agree to send envoys to Washington for more talks on ways to break their deadlock in peacemaking.

But she did not hide her irritation with the unwillingness of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to make what she called the “hard decisions” necessary to achieve a breakthrough.

“We have been stalled at this point in the peace process, negotiating the same issues, for a long time--frankly, far too long,” Albright told a Jerusalem news conference before flying to Kuwait for discussions on the crisis with Iraq. “It is no longer enough to simply talk about wanting peace. It is time to make the difficult decisions and exercise the leadership necessary to achieve it.”

The United States is trying to inject new life into the foundering peace process through intensified mediation by Albright and, two weeks ago, by President Clinton, who met separately with Netanyahu and Arafat at the White House. U.S. officials have warned that the continued stalemate increases the risk of violence in the volatile region and raises the specter of a total breakdown in the peace process.

Albright characterized her own discussions with the two men--a 4 1/2-hour meeting late Saturday with Netanyahu and two hours with Arafat on Sunday--as an attempt to follow up on their talks with Clinton, as well as a chance to brief them on the growing crisis with Iraq, which is resisting U.N. efforts to search for and destroy Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

But it was clear that Albright’s talks on Iraq, both here and elsewhere, were making more headway than the attempts to jump-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Asked for evidence of progress after her meetings, Albright said she had little to report. She said she believed that Netanyahu and Arafat understood more clearly that each of them will have to make difficult decisions in the interest of peace. And she said the two leaders had agreed to send representatives to Washington next week for further talks with U.S. officials.

But she conceded that she had hoped for more progress during her visit.

The Clinton administration has pressed a four-part agenda calling for more Israeli troop withdrawals from the West Bank, a freeze on Jewish settlement construction on disputed land, a greater Palestinian effort to combat terrorism, and accelerated talks aimed at reaching a permanent, comprehensive peace agreement.

Palestinian and Israeli officials said the visit produced no substantive movement toward ending their 10 1/2-month stalemate.

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, said Arafat insisted in his meeting with Albright that Israel must carry out all three phases of a promised, and now overdue, withdrawal from the West Bank. “We will not accept anything outside the framework of the [past] agreements,” he quoted Arafat as saying.

Israel has sought to link its own obligations under the peace accords, specifically its withdrawals from the West Bank, to Palestinian fulfillment of conditions that include the adoption of a new Palestinian charter and a crackdown on militant Islamic groups.

U.S. mediators have supported some elements of the Israeli insistence on “reciprocity” and are urging the two sides to put the process back on track through small, parallel steps aimed at restoring the trust shattered by months of deadlock. According to Israeli and U.S. officials, the United States has pressed Israel to make the first move through a limited troop pullback from the West Bank.

“But we are still insisting that the Palestinians do something concrete before we do anything,” David Bar-Illan, a senior Netanyahu aide, said Sunday. “That’s still a bone of contention.”

Bar-Illan said no decisions had been reached on the scope or timing of any further Israeli withdrawals.