Last-Ditch Effort for Summit Fails

An American envoy shuttled between Israeli and Palestinian leaders Saturday but appeared to make little headway in a last-ditch effort to broker an agreement aimed at reviving Middle East peacemaking.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had already said he could not meet a Clinton administration deadline for agreeing to U.S. proposals to hand over an additional 13% of West Bank territory to Palestinian control and he would not attend a summit Monday in Washington.

On Saturday, with time running out and no apparent change in the Israeli position, U.S. officials accepted the inevitable and announced that the summit was postponed. But they held out hope that it could be rescheduled for later in the month.

U.S. envoy Dennis B. Ross, who was sent to the region last week in an attempt to reach a deal before the proposed Monday summit, met for two hours late Saturday with Netanyahu, but no progress was reported. The two men did agree to meet again today, however, according to a senior Netanyahu aide.

Earlier, after talks with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the veteran Middle East envoy said he had yet to bridge the gaps.

“The differences aren’t large, but they do remain,” Ross told reporters. “I don’t know that we’ll be able to overcome [them] at the present moment.”

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, said that Ross had told Arafat in their two-hour meeting of the “very difficult time” he was having with Netanyahu.

Responding to Israeli complaints that the United States is putting undue pressure on Israel to accede to the American proposals--and quickly--Erekat retorted that it is the United States that is now bending to pressure from Israel to scuttle a deal.

“It is very obvious that it’s time for the American administration to recognize that Mr. Netanyahu is not a tough negotiator but a non-negotiator,” Erekat said.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who issued the invitations to Netanyahu and Arafat to meet with President Clinton, was hopeful to the last minute that the summit might come off on time.

“I have not yet taken no for an answer,” she said at a meeting of foreign ministers in London on Saturday. “This situation is dynamic. There’s an awful lot of work going on. When Prime Minister Netanyahu left here, I think all of us felt there was hope, and I continue to have that hope.”

She added: “Obviously, it is very important that there be consideration of the ideas we have proposed, and we would hope that there would be acceptance of our conditioned invitation to Washington.”

The U.S. invitations were contingent on both sides first accepting the U.S. ideas, which call for Israel to hand over an additional 13% of West Bank territory to Palestinian control in exchange for concrete Palestinian steps to combat terrorism, and other measures.

Arafat accepted the package but Netanyahu did not, insisting that Israel could not safely give up that much more territory at this point in the negotiations.

Publicly, Israel has offered to cede 9% more land, and Netanyahu has privately told U.S. officials that he is prepared to give up 11%.

But Washington insisted that Israel agree to the full package, including the 13% figure, as a condition for the summit, which was intended to mark the opening of accelerated talks aimed at reaching a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Netanyahu said no, at least for now.

It was not clear, however, whether a compromise might yet be reached, possibly through various formulas under which some of the land transferred to the Palestinians would remain under some form of Israeli security control.

David Bar-Illan, Netanyahu’s spokesman, said again Saturday that Israel will not budge in its position that a 13% land hand-over at this stage is unacceptable.

“The American proposals will have to be modified, because we cannot accept 13%,” he said after Ross and Netanyahu wrapped up their discussions for the night.