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Politics : Clinton -- doomed & wagging, Japan collapses, Y2K bug, etc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SOROS who wrote (499)	9/28/1998 1:42:00 PM
From: SOROS	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1151

NEW YORK (AP) — Israeli security concerns about territorial compromise loomed over the latest U.S. attempts to advance Mideast peace, with a trilateral White House meeting today looking like the best hope for a breakthrough. ''I think we're getting close to finalizing an agreement and it's time for the leaders to meet,'' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today in confirming he and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would meet later in the day with President Clinton. The impromptu three-way summit is aimed at nailing down a long-elusive agreement on the West Bank. Netanyahu, interviewed on NBC's ''Today,'' said there would be no major announcement after the meeting. ''But I think there will be other rounds, possibly in the near future and, yes, I would perk up your ears,'' he said. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with the two Mideast leaders Sunday night in New York, but afterward declined to say whether Arafat would join the scheduled Clinton-Netanyahu meeting before returning to New York this afternoon to make his annual speech to the U.N. General Assembly. The Palestinian Authority president was expected for his own White House meeting Tuesday. Israel's acceptance of a U.S. demand that it relinquish another 13 percent of the land it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War cleared a major hurdle to a West Bank agreement with the Palestinians. The White House talks could determine the course of the Arab-Israeli conflict and, if successful, add to the politically troubled president's luster as a peacemaker. Persuasive in steering Protestants and Catholics to an accord in Northern Ireland, Clinton hopes to use it as an example for Arabs and Israel in the Middle East and other adversaries around the world. Albright called her meeting with Netanyahu and Arafat important, but declined to discuss the substance of what was discussed, saying only, ''We still have a lot of work to do.'' Diplomatic sources said a promise by Arafat to tone down the speech he is due to make to the U.N. General Assembly in the afternoon had improved the atmosphere for peacemaking. Arafat, though, declined to respond to reporters' questions about what specific measures he may be willing to take to assure the Israelis they would be safe in giving up more land. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, said in an interview Sunday that ''if there's no security, there is no deal.'' With the accord hanging in the balance, Albright shuttled between Netanyahu and Arafat for a second day before bringing them together under U.S. supervision for the first time in nearly a year. ''It was an important meeting,'' Albright told reporters. ''It was very important to have it. I am not going to talk about the substance of it. But I am very glad we had the meeting.'' State Department spokesman James Rubin said ''it means they are intensifying their efforts,'' and that he would not dispute Israeli assertions that the territorial issue was basically resolved. There ''is a lot more work to be done on security because of the nature of it, and it is more complex,'' Rubin said. And a senior administration official added that not all the details of a West Bank agreement were likely to be settled over the next few days. Netanyahu, in a speech at Hunter College, stressed a need for Israeli civilians to be protected from attack from the West Bank or Gaza. He said the remaining issue was ''to make sure that the land that we hand over to the Palestinians does not become a base for continued terrorist attacks against Israel.'' Gold said Arafat's Palestinian Authority must break up terrorist cells on land it already holds on the West Bank and in Gaza and confiscate weapons. On the Palestinian side, Yasser Kidwa, who heads the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations, said reaching a final agreement was impossible at this stage. He said Albright and her team were trying to reach agreements on several issues, and ''we are not against that.'' Still, Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official and negotiator, said the Palestinians told Albright ''that we are insisting on the package deal, and we are not ready to accept anything less than that.''