Mideast Talks to Continue Despite Clinton Absence

Less than two hours after the Camp David summit ended in apparent failure, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat agreed early today to remain at the presidential retreat to continue working on a treaty to end their half-century conflict.

“Nobody wanted to give up,” President Clinton said in a post-midnight appearance before reporters at this village near Camp David.

It was an astonishing end to a roller-coaster day of diplomacy. Shortly before midnight, White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart had issued a terse statement: “The summit has come to a conclusion without reaching an agreement.”

He had said Clinton planned to return to the White House to explain the reasons for the failure and, perhaps, to assign blame.

But Lockhart said the Israeli and Palestinian delegations refused to take failure for an answer.

“As we were getting ready to leave, it became clear there was a reassessment by the parties to stay,” Lockhart said.

Despite the decision to remain and continue the talks while Clinton attends a summit in Okinawa, Japan, of the Group of 8--the seven leading industrial powers plus Russia--the president said, “The gaps remain substantial” between the Israeli and Palestinian positions.

Clinton is scheduled to return from Okinawa on Sunday. He said he would reassess the talks at that time and decide if it would be beneficial to resume the round-the-clock bargaining that marked the nine-day summit.

“During the time I’m away, Secretary [of State Madeleine] Albright will be working with the parties and will continue to try to close the gaps,” Clinton said.

The agreement by the Israelis and Palestinians to continue talking vindicated the way that Clinton has conducted the talks. He seemed to believe that he could smooth over generations of conflict by the force of his personality and will.

Wednesday was one of the most unusual days in diplomatic history. At midday, the Israelis and the Palestinians exchanged accusations that the other was to blame for the looming collapse of the talks.

Barak dispatched to Clinton a letter accusing Arafat and his aides of bargaining in bad faith. Palestinian spokesmen immediately leveled similar accusations at the Israeli leader.

Barak’s letter said the Israeli prime minister “sadly reached the conclusion that the Palestinian side is not negotiating in good faith and is not willing to negotiate seriously on a peace treaty.”

It asserted that Israeli negotiators “worked tirelessly in order to maximize the chance to put an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but there did not appear to be a Palestinian readiness to make the historic decisions at this stage.”

Clinton refused to take “no” for an answer. He met separately with Barak and Arafat three times each, urging them to settle their long dispute. He failed to budge what sources described as unbending positions.

Shortly before midnight, Clinton decided to end the talks. But then the parties--both of which had suggested during the nine-day summit that they were ready to walk out--decided to stay.

Lockhart told reporters after Clinton’s announcement that the summit was still extremely difficult.

“Nothing that happened this evening in a concrete way would cause us to believe they are closer to solving their differences,” Lockhart said.

In the end, it was the probable consequences of failure that apparently forced the parties to reassess. Middle East experts say that a breakdown in this round of talks could touch off a wave of violence in the volatile region.

Clinton said the Barak-Arafat talks were “the hardest peace issues that I have ever dealt with.

“The short answer of why we are still here is nobody wanted to give up,” Clinton added.

Lockhart declined to say who originally suggested resuming the talks.

According to sources in both camps, neither side was willing to change its long-established positions on the most troubling issues of the conflict, such as creation of a Palestinian state, borders, Jewish settlements, Palestinian refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.

And there was no indication that the position of the parties got any closer during the hectic hours before the announcement that the summit would continue in Clinton’s absence.

Barak came to the summit prepared to agree to Arafat’s lifelong dream of creating a Palestinian state. But he insisted on conditions that the Palestinian leader refused to accept.

Israeli and Palestinian sources said the most difficult issue at the talks concerned Jerusalem, which each side claims as its capital. Barak offered broad autonomy to the Palestinians in predominantly Arab neighborhoods of the city but was unwilling to give the Palestinians sovereignty there. Arafat insisted that East Jerusalem must be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

There were reports that the United States offered a last-minute compromise calling for shared sovereignty in the city. But that plan was unacceptable to Barak, who repeated Israel’s long-standing position that the city is the Jewish state’s “undivided and eternal capital.”

Clinton skipped the first day of his long-planned trip to Japan to extend the Middle East summit by 24 hours.

Although Clinton’s decision to delay his departure for Japan raised expectations that a deal was imminent, Barak and Arafat remained far apart during the talks Wednesday, a rainy day that matched the deteriorating mood.

After the White House conceded defeat, P.J. Crowley, spokesman for the National Security Council, said, “For the last three hours, the president shuttled between the two leaders, but unfortunately he was unable to reach an agreement.”

Then the parties decided to stay, reversing the mood again.

“There should be no illusion about the difficult task ahead, but there should be no limit to the effort we’re prepared to make,” Clinton said early today.

“After all these years, as hard as these issues are, they don’t want to give up,” he said.

On Wednesday, Lockhart insisted that Clinton was determined to “go the extra mile with the parties.”

“We have worked very hard to find a path to an agreement,” Lockhart said. “At this point in time, we have not reached that.”

Israeli and Palestinian officials each blamed the other side for their inability to agree on a treaty settling the long dispute over the future of the Holy Land.

Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, the unofficial spokeswoman for the Palestinian delegation, said in Jerusalem that Barak entered the talks with ideas “written in stone” that made authentic negotiation impossible.

“If you go with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, you cannot negotiate,” she said. Barak has not sufficiently overcome his “mentality of occupation,” she said.

Some in Israel echoed the tone of Barak’s letter. Ofir Pines, a senior Labor Party lawmaker, said he did not believe that the two sides could reach an accord.

“The Palestinian Authority is not prepared, simply not prepared, to cross the path needed for reaching a peace agreement with Israel,” he said on Israeli radio.

The ninth day of the summit produced bizarre diplomatic theater. After transmitting Barak’s letter to the president, the Israeli delegation instructed reporters traveling on Barak’s aircraft to pack their luggage and send it to Andrews Air Force Base in preparation for an early-evening departure.

Israeli sources said Barak had determined that there was no point in remaining at the table and was ready to walk out.

But by evening, the baggage had been sent back to the Israeli reporters’ hotel.

Such theatrical luggage ballets have become a staple of Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat packed his bags during the Israeli-Egyptian summit at Camp David in 1978. He agreed to unpack.

And then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu packed his suitcases and placed them conspicuously outside his residence during the Israeli-Palestinian talks in October 1998 at the Wye Plantation. He also unpacked and stayed.

Both Camp David I and Wye Plantation eventually produced successes. U.S. officials acknowledged that there is no guarantee that Camp David II will also succeed. But it’s still going.

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.