In Push for Pact, U.S. to Host New Mideast Talks

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will begin a new round of intensive talks near Washington next week, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Tuesday, as the Clinton administration tries to inject momentum into the faltering peace process and lay the groundwork for a final accord.

After 2 1/2 hours of discussions with Yasser Arafat in this West Bank city, Albright also announced that the Palestinian leader will meet with President Clinton at the White House next Wednesday.

The U.S. is eager to help the parties clinch a comprehensive peace agreement before Clinton leaves office early next year. U.S. officials hope that the Washington-area talks will narrow the gaps sufficiently to allow for a three-way summit at which the U.S., Palestinian and Israeli leaders would reach a final deal to end the decades-long conflict.

In Washington, Clinton said he is optimistic that the talks are approaching their climax.

“It’s not going to be easy, but I’m encouraged,” the president told reporters Tuesday before a White House meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II. “We’re down now to the difficult issues and to the difficult decisions. And those of us who are not charged with making them, but are charged with helping them get made, just have to try to create the best possible environment.”

Albright also acknowledged the difficulties ahead but said “the historic opportunity” for peace is not lost.

But despite evident U.S. eagerness and a peace process that has lasted seven years, all sides agree that Israel and the Palestinians remain far apart on every critical issue that divides them. A senior U.S. official noted late Tuesday that negotiators have yet to tackle the most emotional issue of all: the future of Jerusalem, claimed by both sides as a capital.

Many analysts here remain skeptical that progress can be made quickly enough to reach a comprehensive agreement by Sept. 13, the date the two sides set last year as a deadline for resolving the conflict.

Israeli and Palestinian officials lately have traded accusations of foot-dragging in the negotiations, with each side saying the other is unwilling or unable to make the courageous decisions necessary to reach an accord.

Arafat sought to refute such accusations in the news conference here. “We have demonstrated over and over our many flexibilities, especially the fact that we are going through a process that we started a long time ago with my previous partner, the late Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Rabin,” he said.

Rabin and Arafat signed the landmark Oslo accord Sept. 13, 1993. Rabin was assassinated two years later by a Jewish extremist, and the process slowly ground to a halt. Arafat appeared to bristle Tuesday when asked by a reporter if he would compare the current Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, to Rabin.

“This question intends to destroy the Palestinian-Israeli relationship, and I will not answer it,” he retorted.

The senior U.S. official, who briefed reporters after Albright returned to Jerusalem late Tuesday and held her second discussion in two days with Barak, said the time was not yet ripe for the three-way summit. “There’s too much to do,” he said. “We are not there yet.”

Making matters more difficult, Barak is expected today to confront one of the toughest challenges yet to his 11-month-old government. The religious Shas Party, Barak’s largest coalition partner, has threatened to support a preliminary vote to dissolve parliament and topple the government.

The bill’s sponsor, right-wing legislator Avigdor Lieberman, said late Tuesday that he had collected firm pledges of support from a majority of the 120-member parliament, including the Shas delegation. Analysts said, however, that even if the proposal passes the preliminary reading, it may not survive the three additional votes necessary for it to become law. Barak supporters also could try to delay the bill, by burying it in legislative committees for months to come.

But if the proposal does win preliminary approval, it will mark a major embarrassment for Barak as he enters a period of momentous decisions on the peace process with the Palestinians, and perhaps with Syria. And it could spell the beginning of the end for his shaky coalition, which includes several factions that are in all but open revolt over his peace policies.

Barak appeared to leave open the possibility that he might force his opponents’ hand and call for early elections himself, if the vote on the proposal appears likely to go against him. Barak said Tuesday that the results of the May 1999 election, in which he won a landslide victory against Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, showed that voters had given him a mandate for change. He told reporters that he would not hesitate to turn to the public for support if necessary to advance his policies.

Albright is scheduled to return to Washington today after a stop in Cairo, where she will meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh and other Arab leaders. But U.S. officials held out little immediate hope of reviving the deadlocked Israeli-Syrian peace talks.

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.