Albright, Arafat Don’t Snap Logjam

In an atmosphere hot with rumors of a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat talked for 90 minutes here Monday but appeared to make little progress toward an Arab-Israeli agreement on how to go forward.

“We didn’t achieve a breakthrough,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said after the hastily arranged meeting ended. “On the contrary, we’re working very hard to overcome differences.”

Albright, asked as she departed if she felt events had begun to accelerate in the direction of agreement, said only: “We’ll see. We had good, constructive talks.”

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasted no time on his return from the United States in denying the day’s fevered speculation that a breakthrough had been reached.

“I believe that we advanced in a limited way some ideas, certain issues, but no agreement has been reached, and there is no breakthrough right now,” Netanyahu told a news conference at his office Monday evening. “There are various ideas, but I don’t think we can announce a solution yet.”

Rumors of a breakthrough were apparently triggered by a report Monday on Israel Radio.

That report, quoting unnamed Washington sources, claimed that the prime minister had accepted a U.S. proposal calling on Israel to hand over an additional 13% of West Bank territory to the Palestinians in exchange for concrete Palestinian steps to crack down on extremists and safeguard Israel’s security.

The Palestinians have accepted the proposal, but Israel has not, insisting that a 13% pullback would endanger the nation’s security. Netanyahu’s government has said publicly that Israeli troops could safely withdraw from a further 9% of the West Bank at this stage and has told U.S. officials privately that it could accept 11%.

The credibility of the Israel Radio dispatch was enhanced, at least in part, by Netanyahu’s comments in the United States recently in which he publicly declared that he could be more generous with this second redeployment if the Palestinians would agree to the cancellation of a planned third hand-over of West Bank land before beginning to negotiate a final peace agreement--a step known as “final status” talks.

These developments, followed by news that Albright had requested an urgent meeting with Arafat, sent the notoriously sensitive Middle East rumor mill into high gear, but only briefly.

Speaking after the meeting, Rubin said, “We’ve been working with Prime Minister Netanyahu on refinements [of the U.S. proposal], and I cannot say we’ve achieved a breakthrough.”

He also said Washington will not alter the basic elements of its plan, which has never officially been made public, to meet the demands of either side.

“When it comes to the key elements of our proposals, we’re not watering them down,” he said.

Albright departed for Geneva immediately after the meeting to report to President Clinton on the talks before flying with Clinton back to Washington.

At a news conference earlier in the day in London, Clinton skirted a question about the status of U.S. efforts to broker an agreement on the next stage of the peace process. He said talks were “at a point where anything we say would increase the chances that they might fail.”

“The parties are working. They’ve been working hard, working in honest, earnest good faith,” he said. “We’ve got our hopes, but it’s important not to raise them.”

While the events lifted hopes briefly in London, they drew immediate fire from right-wing members and supporters of Netanyahu’s government.

The National Religious Party and officials of organizations promoting Jewish settlement in the West Bank reiterated earlier warnings that they would topple the government if Netanyahu agreed to a 13% withdrawal.

The moderate Third Way party, meanwhile, which is also a member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, called on him to continue the peace process with Palestinians and not to “give in” to threats to bring his government down.

Marshall reported from London and Trounson from Jerusalem. Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.