Peace Talks Taper Off During Sabbath

With the Muslim and Jewish Sabbaths descending over Camp David, peace talks slowed Friday even as, far from the secluded mountaintop retreat, proposals were being circulated to recognize some Palestinian administrative control over Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher characterized Friday as “tense, intense, serious.” Exhausted from 11 straight days of negotiations, members of the Palestinian and Israeli delegations gathered Friday evening for a basketball game, then headed back to their respective cabins.

Informal talks were expected to continue throughout today, as the delegations waited for President Clinton to return from Okinawa, Japan, where he is attending a meeting of the world’s leading economic powers. White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart told reporters there that the president is prepared to cut short his stay and return quickly to the Maryland retreat if the talks reach a key juncture.

Clinton told reporters in Okinawa that he was “hopeful” that a peace accord can be achieved at the summit.

Lockhart said this morning that a barbecue and a speech to U.S. Marines and their families at Camp Foster on Okinawa that had been scheduled for Sunday afternoon had been moved to this evening.

In Jerusalem, an Israeli Cabinet minister, Rabbi Michael Melchior, said on television and radio that Prime Minister Ehud Barak is promoting a proposal to recognize Palestinian administrative control over Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

But Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yitzhak Herzog sought to distance Barak from Melchior’s comments, which diplomats said may have been a trial balloon to gauge public reaction.

“We spoke to Rabbi Melchior not long ago. Being a minister in the Cabinet, he probably spoke out of his own volition but not at all being informed of the details of the summit, as he was not a member of the delegation,” Herzog told Reuters.

A Palestinian official said such a proposal may not go far enough to signify progress toward an accord.

Hasan Abdel-Rahman, Washington representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said: “Short of total Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem, there is not ground for an agreement.”

The status of Jerusalem is the most impassioned and difficult of the issues separating the Israelis and the Palestinians. The issue has never been negotiated by Israeli and Arab leaders.

Israel seized East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War, declaring afterward that the city would “eternally” remain united and under exclusive Israeli sovereignty.

Since then, the question of Jerusalem’s fate has threatened to scuttle peace efforts between Palestinians and Israelis.

The status of Jerusalem was left out of the Oslo accords of 1993, under which the Palestinians renounced all violence against Israel and Israel recognized the PLO.

At Camp David, Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat met face to face at a buffet dinner Thursday for the first time in five days. They flanked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who is presiding at the talks in Clinton’s absence. Afterward, Barak and Arafat made a flurry of phone calls to other Mideast leaders, Boucher said.

Barak called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, while Arafat conferred with other Arab leaders, Boucher said.

Barak and Arafat had no plans to meet today, Boucher said.

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Times staff writers Edwin Chen in Okinawa and Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.