Clinton Calls New Summit in Mideast Peace Effort

In a daring diplomatic gamble, President Clinton on Wednesday summoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to Camp David next week for pressure-filled talks that could end generations of conflict, but also could reignite Middle East violence.

Unlike most summits, which are carefully scripted, this one could go either way. Lower-level negotiators deadlocked after months of trying to hammer out compromises on the emotional issues at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

“There is clearly no guarantee of success,” Clinton said in announcing the talks, to be held at the same Maryland presidential retreat that produced the first Arab-Israeli peace agreement in 1978.

By convening the summit Tuesday, Clinton sided with Barak and against Arafat on the question of timing. The Israeli prime minister said last week that a summit is the only way to end the impasse and that he is anxious to begin the talks. For his part, Arafat said lower-level negotiators should be given more time to try to narrow the differences.

The stakes are high for all three leaders, but they seem far greater for Barak. Within minutes of Clinton’s announcement here, Barak’s coalition government, already fragile, began to fall apart.

By late Wednesday, it appeared that two of the parties in Barak’s government were quitting, which would deprive him of a parliamentary majority and make passage of measures related to his peace policies difficult. The parties fear that Barak will cede too much land and make other concessions to the Palestinians in the interest of clinching a deal.

In recent weeks, Barak has toughened his rhetorical stand, insisting that he will not agree to any deal that would weaken the country’s security. But so far, his words seem to have irritated the Palestinians without reassuring Israelis.

At the White House, Clinton said the dangers of a failed summit are not much worse than the dangers of a continued deadlock.

“The negotiators have reached an impasse,” Clinton said. “Movement now depends on historic decisions that only the two leaders can make. . . . To delay this gathering, to remain stalled, is simply no longer an option.”

Both Barak and Arafat told visiting Secretary of State Madeleine Albright last week that they are far from agreement on a treaty to divide the Holy Land. But both leaders said they would attend a summit if Clinton decided to hold one.

Clinton’s decision to do so without the sort of thorough preparation that could help guarantee success was a sharp departure from his usual cautious diplomacy. Middle East experts say a dramatic failure could produce a spasm of violence.

Last year, Barak and Arafat agreed on a Sept. 13, 2000, target date for completing work on a final peace treaty. Although the date had no particular significance, it has taken on increasing importance as it approaches. Arafat has vowed to issue a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood if the date passes without a final agreement. In response, Barak has said Israel will annex the Jewish settlements in the West Bank if the Palestinians go ahead with their statehood plans.

“If nothing is accomplished, then I think that on Sept. 13 you are likely to see each side competing to establish facts, beginning with the Palestinians,” said Richard Haass, director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “It is hard to see how such a competition could be peaceful.”

Although Clinton and his aides insist that his only interest is in helping to mediate a Middle East peace settlement, there is no doubt that a deal would be the jewel in the president’s foreign policy legacy. Conversely, a failure, coming after his humiliating rebuff at the hands of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad earlier this year concerning other Middle East issues, would tarnish Clinton’s reputation as a statesman.

If the Camp David talks founder, it seems unlikely that Clinton will get another chance at helping broker a peace deal before he leaves office Jan. 20.

Ahmed Korei, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, who is better known as Abu Alaa, said there is little chance of success. “This summit will end without any results because the Israeli position is known and will not change, and the Palestinian position is clear and it too will not change,” he said.

But Arafat cannot simply stonewall Clinton, because the Palestinians need Washington’s goodwill, both diplomatically and economically. At the same time, Arafat cannot agree to too many concessions without provoking hard-line Palestinians to violence that he would be unable to control.

“Arafat knows that he will be hit with a lot of pressure from Clinton to be reasonable,” said Richard W. Murphy, former assistant secretary of State for the Middle East. “Clinton will tell him what the administration can do for him if he is reasonable. But he could go home and find a bloody mess on his hands. You don’t hear much praise [by Palestinians] of his performance since [the 1993 Oslo peace accord].”

For Barak, a successful summit may be the only way to save his crumbling government. Although his decision to go to Camp David angered some of the right-wing members of his Cabinet, Middle East experts say the Israeli public usually supports peace, even when the terms are controversial. But without a firm deal, the prime minister is in deep trouble.

One of the most prominent members of the Cabinet, Interior Minister Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident, announced his resignation from the government Wednesday night to a rally of his immigrant supporters in central Jerusalem.

Sharansky’s party holds only a handful of seats in the Knesset, or parliament, but he represents a huge bloc of voters--immigrants from the former Soviet Union who constitute one-sixth of Israel’s population. Their support was decisive in Barak’s election last year.

“Barak, who has spoken so much about the need for unity, is taking the way of the minority now,” Sharansky told the several thousand people who were bused to the rally. “I would rather join the majority.”

In the wake of Sharansky’s announcement, rightist religious parties, who make up about a third of Barak’s parliamentary majority, suggested that they too would abandon the prime minister.

One of them, the National Religious Party, with five seats in parliament, announced that it will in fact leave the government. If the National Religious Party and Sharansky’s faction--Israel With Immigration--stick by their decision, Barak is reduced to a 59-seat coalition in the 120-member parliament. In the past, however, Israeli Cabinet ministers have sometimes threatened to resign only to change their minds.

Barak, speaking in Paris where he had traveled earlier Wednesday, said he is determined to push forward his peace agenda, even if he has to do so with the slimmest of governmental control.

“We are on the threshold of decisions crucial to Israel’s future,” he said. “I was elected by a large majority . . . under the clear plan of separating from the Palestinians while strengthening Israel’s future and security through peace agreements. . . . Of course I would prefer to do this with the present government, but my mandate and mission were given to me by the people.”

U.S. officials said Israeli and Palestinian delegations are expected to arrive in Washington this weekend for preliminary talks before the formal start of the summit at Camp David.

In 1978, President Carter presided over a marathon 11-day meeting with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the retreat. The talks produced an agreement that led to the first formal peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbor.

Officials said the first Camp David conference is the model for next week’s meeting. Carter convened the 1978 summit even though there was no agreement in advance as to what it would produce. There have been few such open-ended summits in the 22 years since, although a nine-day conference in 1998 at the Wye Plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore--attended by Clinton, Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--also was not scripted in detail.

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Kempster reported from Washington and Wilkinson from Jerusalem.