Mideast Peace Treaty Within Reach, U.S. Says

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are so close to the peace deal that eluded them last week at Camp David, according to President Clinton, that “if they want it, they can get it.” He says his administration will maintain steady pressure on both sides to get the job done.

At the same time, Clinton acknowledges that the remaining disputes--over Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and other intractable issues--are so emotional that they cannot be settled without causing real pain to Israelis and Palestinians alike.

“It’s just a question of making sure that we keep pushing them,” the president said in an interview conducted Monday with the Fox television affiliate in Tampa, Fla. A transcript was issued by the White House on Tuesday.

“When you deal with issues this difficult and this painful, it’s like going to the dentist without having your gums deadened,” he added. “You’re not going to do it unless somebody herds you on and you do it.”

But Clinton said it was “too premature to make a decision” about whether to summon Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat back to Camp David for more face-to-face talks.

As he has done consistently since the latest summit ended, Clinton put the onus on the Palestinians to revive the talks. He said Barak has made it clear that he is ready to make a deal while Arafat has not. U.S. officials said last week that the summit collapsed after Arafat rejected a U.S.-proposed compromise on Jerusalem that Barak was ready to accept.

Clinton said Barak is ready to resume the peace process after surviving a no-confidence vote Monday in the Israeli parliament, “so I think we just have to see if we can get some movement from the Palestinians as well and see if we can put this thing together again.”

Despite Clinton’s reference to a lack of movement, Arafat on Tuesday was in the midst of a tour of the Arab world, where his performance at the summit has won applause even as Barak has faced mounting criticism at home. Even some of Barak’s closest allies suggested that new elections might be necessary to end the governmental crisis.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Tuesday that Palestinian and Israeli bargainers have been in daily contact since the summit ended.

During a stop in Algeria, Arafat said it is time to bring the Russian government into the talks as a mediator alongside the United States. Although Moscow was co-sponsor of the 1991 Madrid conference, which jump-started the Mideast peace process, Washington has blocked any Russian role in the current round of negotiations.

“The negotiations were not a total failure,” Arafat said, according to news agency accounts. “There are attempts underway by the Americans, Europeans and Russians, and we are awaiting the results of these attempts.”

Earlier in his tour, Arafat told newspapers in Saudi Arabia that he will issue a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood if the negotiations are not complete by Sept. 13. But he told a Yemeni news agency that he might postpone the step if asked by an Arab summit.

Clinton said he takes the Sept. 13 deadline seriously. Most Middle East experts believe that if Arafat acted unilaterally, either in September or later, that would spark a fresh round of violence, possibly including firefights between the paramilitary Palestinian police and the Israeli army.

“The calendar is working against them . . . because they have pledged to finish by the 13th of September,” Clinton said. “And that puts all kinds of pressure, especially on the Palestinians. So they’ve got to keep working right now. They’ve got to do everything they can to get as much as they can done over the next six weeks.”

For Barak, there is another kind of deadline. After their 50-50 vote on an opposition no-confidence motion, Israeli lawmakers began a three-month summer recess. That gives Barak 90 days in which to maneuver without facing formal parliamentary scrutiny. Barak’s allies say he must use that time to wrap up a peace agreement he could submit to a referendum, possibly in conjunction with early parliamentary elections.

“During these three months, the prime minister has to make a heroic attempt to complete the negotiations with the Palestinians . . . and to initiate early elections,” said Yossi Sarid, leader of the dovish Meretz Party, a partner in Barak’s coalition. The next formally scheduled elections are not until 2003.

Ariel Sharon, leader of the opposition Likud Party and a former defense and foreign minister, attacked Barak for accepting the U.S. plan that would have given the Palestinians partial sovereignty in some Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

“Prime Minister Barak broke his promises to the people of Israel,” Sharon told the Foreign Press Assn. in Jerusalem. “He hasn’t got a majority, and I think we will have to go to [early] elections.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discussed the negotiations over Jerusalem at the Vatican, which has called for the city to be put under international supervision, a solution that neither Israel nor the Palestinians have embraced.

She met Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican’s foreign minister, but did not have an audience with Pope John Paul II.

“The complication here is that Jerusalem is holy to three religions, and how to handle this, at the same time as issues of political sovereignty,” Albright told reporters after her talks at the Holy See. “At Camp David, certainly the issue of internationalization was not the solution.”