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To: long-gone who wrote (22080)	10/21/1998 3:46:00 PM
From: Alex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116769

Crisis Hits Middle East Peace Summit At Wye <Picture: Reuters Photo> Reuters Photo By Daniel Sternoff WYE MILLS, Md. (Reuters) - Crisis struck the Middle East peace summit in Maryland Wednesday when the Israelis threatened to walk out, accusing the United States of going back on its word and the Palestinians of evasion. The United States, which has already nursed the talks through six days of roller-coaster negotiations on land and security, said it would pursue its efforts and submit a new draft agreement to the Israelis and Palestinians. ''We are at a critical moment... We can't answer the question of which way this will go. The United States can only do so much,'' said State Department spokesman James Rubin. President Clinton, who has made an extraordinary investment in the talks, would go back to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat if it would be productive, the White House said. A senior Israeli official earlier said his country's delegation was thinking of pulling out of Wye Plantation, the secluded summit site 70 miles (100 km) east of Washington. ''There is a serious crisis. The Israeli delegation is threatening to leave,'' he said. ''The Americans have retreated from previous understandings with the Israelis and the Palestinians are not willing to give clear answers about their commitments on different issues,'' added the official, who declined to be named. A second senior official confirmed the threat to withdraw. Aviv Bushinsky, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also suddenly talked tough. ''Without a specific guarantee to change the (Palestine National) Charter... there can be no agreement. And likewise with the extradition of terrorists,'' he told reporters. The Israeli threat came like a bolt from the blue at the peace conference, which broke for the night in the early hours of Wednesday on a much more optimistic note. The Palestinians took the Israeli threat more lightly than the United States, dismissing it as a last-minute tactic to extract more concessions from them. ''What crisis?'' one Palestinian delegate said. ''We were not informed by either the Israelis or the Americans, therefore we believe that the Israelis are trying to press the Americans to blackmail us. We think it is a game,'' said another. A senior U.S. official also hinted at some skepticism that the Israelis would carry out their threat. ''You can predict that there will be some posturing going on in talks like these. One minute there's an agreement and the next there's no hope. The parties will decide,'' he said. ''There are serious issues at stake and ultimately the parties themselves are going to have to decide what they want and can accept,'' added the official, speaking in Washington. Rubin said the United States had received some questions about the arrangements for departure from Wye. ''We cannot hold people here against their will... We do not have information at this time that any of the relevant parties are leaving. There are logistical issues,'' Rubin said. The spokesman said the U.S. draft agreement would try to cover all the points in contention but it might leave gaps where there are big differences between the two parties. ''We expect during the course of the day to provide a text of what we think will help the two sides reach the agreements necessary to put the peace process back on track,'' he said. ''We're trying to provide something that we think reflects where we are and how we can get to yes.'' ''Let me be very clear. Despite the intensity of today and the intensity of yesterday, it is not at all clear that tough choices necessary to reach an agreement can or will be made. There are significant gaps remaining,'' Rubin said. The Israeli negotiator complained that the Palestinians wanted to get the next 13 percent of West Bank land without giving Israel anything in return. ''There is no substantial (Palestinian) plan for the fight against terror,'' he said. His other complaints were that the Palestinians would not arrest 120 people on a list of suspected militants, jail people who kill Israelis, reduce the size of the Palestinian police force, confiscate illegal weapons and convene the Palestine National Council (PNC) to rewrite a national charter. Netanyahu and Arafat went to Wye Plantation last Thursday for what they thought would be a four-day summit supervised by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Clinton persuaded them to stay on and, dismayed by the gloomy atmosphere, he stepped in to mediate on five of the first six days. He seemed to have stopped a Palestinian grenade attack in Israel from wrecking the talks Monday. The Americans, seeking to end 19 months of deadlock in the Middle East peace process, brought King Hussein of Jordan into the talks Tuesday from cancer treatment in Minnesota but it was not clear if he would come back Wednesday. Any agreement will have to balance Israel's security demands from the Palestinians with the Palestinian demand for a better deal on Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. But it must also cover a wide range of issues left over from the previous stages of the peace process that began with the historic Oslo agreement of 1993. These include a safe passage for Palestinians to travel between Gaza and the West Bank, an airport and a sea port in Gaza, the release of Palestinian prisoners and the Israeli demand that the Palestinians rewrite their national charter to recognize an Israeli right to exist. dailynews.yahoo.com