U.S. Attempts to Jump-Start Mideast Talks : Diplomacy: New proposals are offered. And a U.S. team will visit the region next week to push for flexibility.
WASHINGTON — The Clinton Administration sought to revive the moribund Middle East peace talks Wednesday by introducing American proposals to bridge the gaps between the Israeli and Palestinian positions and by ordering its newly reorganized team of mediators to visit the region.
The initiative, described by one official as the beginning of a new high-profile American campaign to push the 20-month-old peace process off dead center, came one day before the end of the 10th round of separate-but-interlocking negotiations between Israel and each of its main Arab adversaries, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians.
Contents of the U.S. proposal were kept secret. But Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi indicated that the plan falls short of Palestinian hopes.
“Should American involvement take place in a serious way, then it should be even-handed,†Ashrawi said. “We do not need another opponent to deal with. We already have enough.â€
Elyakim Rubinstein, chief of Israel’s delegation in the talks with the Palestinians, was noncommittal. He said only that regardless of the U.S. initiative, “the negotiations among the delegations must continue.â€
State Department spokesman Mike McCurry announced that a four-member U.S. team, headed by Middle East mediator Dennis Ross, will visit the region next week to appeal for flexibility from the top leadership of each of the parties. U.S. officials have expressed frustration that the delegations engaged in the formal talks seem to lack the authority to move beyond well-known positions.
Ross, the State Department’s policy planning chief during the George Bush Administration and a top Middle East adviser to former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, was recently appointed the Clinton Administration’s special coordinator for the peace talks.
The decision to send Ross, instead of Secretary of State Warren Christopher, to head the delegation is a tacit acknowledgment by the Administration that the parties are far apart and that success of the U.S. mediation effort is far from assured. Officials said last week that Christopher would visit the region only if it seemed likely that he would succeed.
“There are no plans at the moment for the secretary to make any trips to the region,†McCurry said. “The plan (is) for the peace team to go. We’ll see what kind of progress they make.â€
Although Ross plans to visit all of the parties engaged in the peace talks, the U.S. proposals went only to the Israelis and Palestinians. There was no similar U.S. initiative in Israel’s talks with Syria, Jordan or Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s chief delegate for the talks with Syria, said that his government does not consider the Golan Heights to be part of Israel, despite the 1981 action of the Israeli Parliament to extend Israeli law to the strategic mountain region. He said that holding the Golan would be vital to Israel in the event of war with Syria but in the context of peace with Damascus, the heights would be far less important.
In the current round of talks, most of the attention has been on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Israel offered what Rubinstein called “early empowerment,†a plan to allow the Palestinians to control much of the day-to-day government activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Rubinstein said that it would give Palestinians authority over as much as 75% of the territories’ budgets.
But Ashrawi said that the Palestinians are wary of the proposal because they fear that if they accept a partial transfer of powers, that might be all they will ever get.
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