Albright confronts dim prospects for advancing Mideast peace talks

JERUSALEM, May 3 (JTA) — It appears unlikely that the stalemated Middle East peace process will spring into motion any time soon. As U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright prepared to hold separate meetings in London this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, both American and Israeli officials were downplaying expectations of a breakthrough. Indeed, as Albright arrived Saturday in London to prepare for the meetings, the U.S. State Department spokesman, James Rubin, said Albright was not optimistic about bridging differences between the two sides. Rubin said her pessimism was based on preliminary telephone reports from U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who was in the Middle East last week to talk with the two sides prior to the London meetings, and from Vice President Al Gore, who tried his hand at peacemaking last week during a visit to mark Israel’s jubilee. Nor was there much optimism emerging from Israel, which along with the Palestinian Authority has been reiterating the same positions for months. The talks have been stalled for some 14 months. The Palestinian Authority broke off negotiations with Israel after infrastructure work began for a new Jewish neighborhood at Har Homa in southeastern Jerusalem. Three ensuing Hamas suicide bombings of Israeli targets in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv dealt a further blow to hopes of bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to the path of trust and compromise needed to give substance to the Oslo accords. At a joint news conference with Gore last Friday, Netanyahu said the gaps between the Israeli and Palestinian positions were “considerable.” During his conversations with Netanyahu, including a surprise two-hour session Sunday before he traveled on to Egypt, Gore failed to convince the premier to accept a reported American proposal for Israel to redeploy from an additional 13 percent of the West Bank in exchange for specific Palestinian steps to crack down on terror. Arafat, who met with Gore in the West Bank town of Ramallah early Sunday morning, has accepted the U.S. proposal, but wants an additional redeployment by the end of this year. Israel maintains that the proposal would be harmful to its security interests. It has offered 9 percent and balks at offering an additional redeployment, saying any further transfer of West Bank territory should only take place as part of the final-status negotiations. Some Western and Arab diplomats say Israeli officials have told them privately they might hand over as much as 11 percent. Palestinian officials, who have been warning for months that the region could explode into violence, are now reiterating their impatience with what they view as Israel’s intransigence. Arafat told journalists in the Gaza Strip on Sunday that Israel would be squarely to blame if no progress were achieved in London. The talks’ success would “depend on Netanyahu’s actions because the problem does not lie anywhere else,” he said. Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath charged that Israel’s wrangling over the redeployment percentages proved that the Jewish state was refusing to accept already-signed accords. “They are dragging their feet and hoping that the whole process will change,” he said. “If it changes, it will be for the worse, not the better.” But, in the run-up to the London talks, Israel showed no signs of changing its stance. On Sunday, Netanyahu spokesman David Bar-Illan reiterated the Israeli position, saying it would be “utterly impossible” for Israel to accept a 13 percent redeployment. An Israeli official traveling with Netanyahu to London was quoted as saying that Israel would like the London talks to focus more on the future course of the peace process — the timing for starting the final-status talks in particular — than on the exact percentages of an Israeli redeployment. Despite Israel’s rejection of the 13 percent redeployment figure, Israeli officials quoted by the daily Ha’aretz believed that the United States would not present an ultimatum for the acceptance of its proposals and would continue its mediation efforts. Gore, the highest-ranking foreign dignitary to attend the Jewish state’s jubilee, got a first-hand glimpse of the difficulties confronting American mediators. After meeting with Netanyahu on Sunday, Gore traveled on to Egypt for discussions with President Hosni Mubarak. Gore later conceded to reporters that both sides had a “long way to go” before resolving their differences. Using the careful language of other American officials — many of whom have tried unsuccessfully to nudge the peace process forward — Gore spoke of the “extraordinary” opportunity for peace being offered at the London talks. “The stage is set for progress. Progress in these discussions would have very significant leverage for the future in the entire region,” he said. Observers concur that the stage is set — but they find little reason to believe that the actors in the peace process drama are ready to move the action forward.