Albright Extends Effort to Break Mideast Impasse

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright launched an intense drive Monday to break the Mideast peace process deadlock, with the Clinton administration pressing Israel and the Palestinians to move toward negotiations on a final settlement.

Albright met separately through the day and into the night with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

She canceled plans to fly home late Monday to Washington so she could stay here for a second day of negotiations.

At one point, after a five-hour meeting with Albright, Netanyahu sounded a note of optimism about the prospects for peace, saying he thought it is “possible to achieve progress here. . . . It is time to move the process forward. Both of us [Israelis and Palestinians] have suffered from wars and terrorism.”

Albright returned from her second talk with Netanyahu and retired for the night, scheduling a third meeting with the Israeli leader over breakfast today. Arafat was reduced almost to the role of a bystander as Albright concentrated most of her time and attention on Netanyahu.

The administration appears to be seeking a breakthrough in these London talks. Both Vice President Al Gore and U.S. peace envoy Dennis B. Ross had shuttled through the Middle East over the past week; Albright and her aides kept up the pressure Monday, hinting that America’s patience was running out.

“Clearly, these are a decisive set of meetings,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin asserted. He raised the prospect of “violence and disillusionment” if the peace process were to break down.

The Middle East peace talks have been at an impasse for 14 months. As the London meetings started, the main stumbling block appeared to be a dispute over how much more land in the West Bank Israel should transfer to the Palestinians. The administration had proposed that Israel hand over, in stages, about 13% of the West Bank land it now holds in exchange for a Palestinian crackdown on extremists and other security measures. Arafat had agreed to this proposal.

But Netanyahu had said in public that his government would be willing to withdraw from no more than 9%, though he had suggested, in private, that he might accept a figure of 11%.

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Israel has steadfastly refused to discuss in any detail which tracts it might or might not give up, though Israeli officials insist that the differences in the size of the hand-over make a difference in its security concerns.

The Palestinians have sought a significantly greater hand-over, saying they cannot compromise further and cannot understand the Israeli intransigence over what appear now to be relatively small but intractable differences between the two sides.

But it was increasingly evident Monday that the administration was pushing both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to move beyond this impasse and to begin working quickly on the broader issues that will be required for a peace settlement.

Under the accords reached in Oslo, and signed on the White House lawn in 1993, the Israelis and Palestinians are to complete their talks for a Middle East peace settlement by May 4, 1999. The issues to be resolved in the “final status” negotiations are the most sensitive between the two, including the fate of Jerusalem and the borders of a Palestinian state.

In London, State Department spokesman Rubin said, “The focus of the meetings is on what’s necessary to get us to final status talks.” He said the United States wants an “agreement in principle” on issues that have held up the peace process for more than a year--that is, the Israeli redeployments in the West Bank and Palestinian security measures.

The U.S. goal, he said, is to move ahead to the final settlement talks. “Time is running out,” Rubin asserted. “A year is not a lot of time to complete that process.”

Arafat has already said that if there is no final peace settlement, he will declare an independent Palestinian state next May. Netanyahu has said Israel will annex land in the West Bank if the Palestinian leader unilaterally declares independence.

Over the past week, U.S. officials have raised the prospect that if there is no final settlement by next May, both Israelis and Palestinians could find themselves in a new cycle of violence from which neither side would benefit.

What the Israelis and Palestinians “have to decide is, do they want to roll the dice--do they really want to gamble on six more months of basically everything in suspended animation?” President Clinton said at his news conference Friday. “Do they really believe it will be better then? Do they really believe it will be better in another year? What happens when the timetable runs out on the Oslo accord? Will we be closer to peace?”

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Albright spent considerably more time Monday with Netanyahu than with Arafat. The Palestinian leader, though, has already accepted the administration plan for Israel to hand over 13% of the land in the West Bank, while Netanyahu must be persuaded.

The Israeli leader suggested publicly at one point that he wouldn’t be able to agree immediately in London to everything the administration was seeking. “There are certain decisions which I can only take in Israel, with the government,” Netanyahu said, apparently referring to the need for a meeting of his Cabinet.

Administration officials said they were trying to persuade both sides to agree to accelerate negotiations on a final settlement, so it can be reached well before the May 1999 deadline.