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Albright Fails to Win PLO Agreement for Summit
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright failed on Wednesday to win Palestinian agreement for a US-Israeli-PLO summit which Washington hopes will lead to a peace treaty by a September target date.
Palestinian officials said a decision on whether to hold a summit sought by Israel and hosted by the United States must await the outcome of further Israeli-Palestinian talks in Washington after US Independence Day on July 4.
"The summit will be decided by President Clinton when the talks have made substantive progress. We will abide by his decision," said Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian minister of planning and international cooperation.
But Albright and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said it was too early to determine whether such negotiations - let alone a summit - would take place.
"It is only the president of the United States that will be able, having all the information from both sides to make up his mind if a summit meeting is possible, and we will respect whatever decision or view he might say about it," Barak said.
"If and when the time will come, we will be ready," he told a news conference after his second round of talks with Albright in two days.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who met Albright in the West Bank city of Ramallah, repeated the PLO's core position that Israel must abide by UN Security Council Resolution 242 and withdraw from territory seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
"We will not return to the borders of 1967," Barak vowed on Israeli Army Radio, referring to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, areas where nearly 170,000 Jews have since settled.
"The Palestinians want 100 percent of the territory ... They are worrying about the Palestinian issues. I worry about the state of Israel," Barak added.
Albright cautioned both sides against trying to "get 100 percent" of their demands.
"In this regard, no one can afford to allow 'the perfect' to become the enemy of the good and the result needs to ensure that both sides emerge stronger rather than weaker," she said at the news conference with Barak.
In her remarks to reporters, Albright declined to discuss details of her talks.
"As you know, the president sent me to the region to determine whether a basis exists for bringing the leaders to Washington for a summit or whether additional work is required.
"I will be reporting to the president when I return to Washington ... Expect to see that it will be President Clinton who will decide when it is appropriate to hold a summit."
Determined to meet the September deadline for a treaty, Barak wants the most sensitive issues, including borders, Jewish settlements and the fate of Jerusalem, resolved in an intense, secluded summit next month in the United States.
Some Israeli officials have spoken of returning 92 percent of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians, who want to establish an independent state in the whole of the territory.
Israel has so far given back to the Palestinians about 40 percent of the land it seized in the Six-Day War of June 1967.
"At this stage we still don't have an agreement. The real negotiations will open only if there's a summit," Barak said.
Israel envisages an intensive summit based on the Camp David model which led to an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in 1979.
In an incident underlining tensions between the sides, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police pointed weapons at each other on Wednesday in a beachfront confrontation near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli troops fired rubber-coated metal bullets at Palestinian demonstrators. No injuries were reported in the standoff triggered when around 50 settlers erected a tent on a beach under Israeli control but used by Palestinians.
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