U.S. Envoy’s Talks Continue in Mideast

U.S. envoy Anthony C. Zinni held a second day of separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat on Saturday amid quickening efforts to broker a cease-fire.

Israel said that Sharon was willing to meet with top Palestinian officials to declare a cease-fire in the deadliest fighting between the two sides in decades. Palestinian officials said they too wanted a truce but would not meet with the Israelis until the army pulls out of Palestinian territories it has entered in recent weeks.

Israeli forces have withdrawn from several cities but remain entrenched in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel may have jumped the gun by issuing an announcement that Sharon would open cease-fire talks today with senior Palestinian officials. The announcement from Sharon’s office followed Zinni’s late Saturday visit with the prime minister at his farm in southern Israel’s Negev desert.

But with the Palestinians insisting that they could not participate because of the Israeli military presence on their land, and with American officials suggesting that the Israeli statement was premature, Sharon’s office later issued a clarification. No meeting had been agreed upon for today, the new statement said, but Zinni would continue in his efforts to broker a cease-fire.

Israel’s statements appeared to be an effort to pressure the Palestinians into joining talks even though the conditions they set forth had not been fulfilled.

Yasser Abed-Rabbo, the Palestinian Authority’s culture and information minister and a spokesman for Arafat, accused Israel of pulling a fast one and of “lying” to impress Zinni. Abed-Rabbo reiterated his government’s insistence that Israeli forces be out of the West Bank and Gaza before Palestinian officials sit down to talk.

If talks do get started, it will be an important step in pulling the two sides back from a conflict raging seemingly out of control. The last two weeks were the deadliest yet in nearly 18 months of fighting, as Israel launched a massive military assault on Palestinian refugee camps and towns, and Palestinians staged a string of suicide bombings and shooting ambushes.

Nearly 20% of all the people killed in the conflict died in the last two weeks.

Israel came under unusual criticism from its strongest ally, the United States, which demanded a full withdrawal from Palestinian areas. Scenes of massive roundups of young Palestinian men, blindfolded and with their arms marked with numbers, triggered an outcry among human rights organizations here and abroad.

The Israeli military operations, with a stated goal of wiping out terrorism, did little to improve Sharon’s political position. Under pressure to restore security to his citizens, the prime minister saw his popularity ratings drop again precipitously in weekend polls. In one survey, only 35% of respondents said they thought that he was doing a good job--even though the same poll showed huge support for the army’s raids on refugee camps.

If a cease-fire is agreed to, Israel wants to move quickly into a security plan drafted last year by CIA Director George J. Tenet. It calls for the Palestinian Authority to confiscate weapons and arrest terrorist suspects. Israel would be required to pull its troops back to lines that existed before the current conflict erupted in September 2000, which would mean dismantling numerous roadblocks and outposts.

The Palestinians want to add political issues to the discussion and not limit it to security matters. Israel is resisting that.

Numerous cease-fires declared in the past have collapsed.