Barak Wants to Pare U.S. Role in Mideast

Prime Minister Ehud Barak will seek to reshape Israel’s troubled relationship with the United States and revive the pursuit of peace in the Middle East as he heads for Washington tonight to begin a six-day U.S. visit.

Barely a week on the job, Barak is keen to take advantage of goodwill emanating from the Clinton administration and much of the influential American Jewish community. He also wants to persuade the United States to step aside as middleman in the Middle East peace process.

Barak’s May 17 electoral victory over hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his repeated pledge to renew long-stalled negotiations with the Palestinians and Syria, is being heralded by many as a new chance to resolve, as Barak puts it, the 100-year conflict between Jews and Arabs.

The concrete steps he will take to put his vision into action are less clear, and will form the meat of talks with President Clinton on Thursday and Monday. Barak also will meet with senior administration officials, speak to Congress and visit New York.

Many in official Washington and a large number of American Jewish organizations are optimistic about the Barak government, though no one is predicting a quick breakthrough because Israel and its Arab neighbors remain far apart on numerous issues.

“We all have to be careful that optimism does not outrun realism,” said Bruce Ramer, a prominent Los Angeles attorney and national president of the American Jewish Committee. “This will not be as easy as we’d like it to be.”

Barak has let one goal of his trip be known. He will tell U.S. officials that he wants Washington to lower its profile in Mideast peacemaking and return to its traditional role of facilitator, especially in the difficult talks ahead with the Palestinians.

The U.S. during the last three years of stalemate has been forced to play the more activist role, called on to solve even minor disputes, because relations between Netanyahu’s Israel and the Palestinians were so acrimonious. For last fall’s Wye Plantation accord signed by Netanyahu and the Palestinians, only hours of personal intervention by Clinton clinched the deal; the agreement in turn gave the CIA the unprecedented role of verifying Palestinian security plans.

That kind of dealing could change under Barak if, as he suggests, he is eager to conduct direct, bilateral negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and his designates. Like the army commander that he once was, Barak wants to take full charge of the peace process.

To underscore this shift, Barak chose to meet first with leaders in the Mideast--Arafat, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II--before Clinton.

The U.S. will serve “absolutely not as a factor inside the talks, not as a player within the process, but as a fair mediator accepted and trusted by all sides,” Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy said Tuesday.

U.S. intervention in talks with Syria is likely to remain strong, while U.S. officials are reserving judgment on the contours of their role with the Palestinians. First they want to gauge whether Barak and Arafat are able to form the working relationship that both have said they desire.

Palestinians are already nervous, however, because Barak has said he wants to delay previously agreed-to land transfers and other concessions contained in the Wye Plantation accord. Barak says he would combine elements of Wye, put on hold by Netanyahu, with final negotiations over extremely thorny issues such as the status of the disputed city of Jerusalem, borders and refugees.

Saeb Erekat, Arafat’s chief negotiator, said he agrees that Palestinians and Israelis ought to be able to talk more directly to each other, especially with the Barak government now in office.

But he cautioned: “If Barak starts to officially plan to freeze Wye, a very strong Palestinian delegation will jump on the next flight to Washington.”

Netanyahu didn’t get along with Clinton much better than he did with the Palestinians, and as historically strong U.S.-Israeli relations deteriorated, a new and increasingly friendly rapprochement developed between the U.S. and the Palestinians--to the private chagrin of some Israelis.

Israeli newspapers this week have been full of eager talk about the prospects of improved ties. One envisioned the president and Hillary Rodham Clinton having Barak and his wife, Nava, over for an “intimate” dinner at Camp David, with the Israeli leader, an accomplished classical pianist, “playing Chopin on the ivories as Hillary holds thoughtful discussion with Nava about the importance of education.”

Part of the U.S. eagerness comes from domestic political considerations: It’s a good time, in advance of next year’s U.S. elections, to be friendly with Israel.

And some in Washington want to see Barak as the heir to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whom Barak routinely invokes as his “commander” and with whom Clinton had a warm relationship.

Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995, was Barak’s mentor. Both men had distinguished military careers and came to preside over Israel’s venerable center-left Labor Party. But Barak goes to Washington far less familiar with its inner workings than Rabin, who had served as ambassador to the U.S.

And while both favored centralized governments, Barak is much more of a one-man show than Rabin ever was. Rabin designated a creative foreign minister in Shimon Peres, who was instrumental in forging the 1993 Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians. Barak has chosen a weak foreign minister and kept the Defense Ministry for himself--in effect, no other minister is working on the peace process.