Clinton Rejoins Middle East Peace Effort

President Bill Clinton returned to secretive Middle East summit talks on Thursday evening, turning his full attention back to Israeli-Palestinian efforts to end a half century conflict after a day out.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat grappled for a third day with the toughest issues dividing their peoples - the status of Jerusalem, the contours of a Palestinian state, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the future of Jewish settlers - but details of the summit were cloaked in a formidable shroud of official silence.

Clinton, who spent the past two nights with the leaders at the Camp David hilltop retreat, left for around eight hours on Thursday to fulfil prior speaking engagements.

Sequestered in the isolated compound 70 miles (110 km) from Washington, Barak and Arafat held their first direct talks without US mediators late on Wednesday.

"They spoke about the depth of their responsibility," an Israeli official said of the encounter, which US officials said took place in Arafat's quarters and came at the initiative of the parties.

Officials were tight-lipped on the substance of the talks and Clinton told reporters the less he said about the content, the better the chances of an agreement.

"Welcome to the daily news blackout," was how State Department spokesman Richard Boucher began a briefing at a press centre near Camp David.

CLINTON LAUDS BENEFITS OF RECONCILIATION

Clinton, who left Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in charge while he was away from the summit, said at a White House ceremony that a US-Vietnam trade agreement signed on Thursday should show Middle East rivals the benefits of reconciliation.

"This agreement is one more reminder that former adversaries can come together to find common ground in a way that benefits all their people, to let go of the past and to embrace the future," Clinton said.

"As all of you know, that is what we are now trying to achieve at Camp David in what many believe is the most difficult of all historical circumstances," he said.

Boucher told a briefing that "trying to understand the interests and reconcile them is a very difficult process that we are going through now."

"They are grappling with some very tough issues that involve vital interests," he said.

One newcomer joined the closed-door talks during the night - Dan Meridor, a senior parliamentarian and former justice and finance minister, who came in at Barak's request.

"He has tremendous experience and as chairman of the foreign affairs and defence committee he will be an asset to the negotiations," an Israeli official said.

Meanwhile, three senior Palestine Liberation Organisation leaders arrived in Washington, and US officials indicated privately they might be allowed into Camp David to meet Arafat in an exception to the seclusion rules governing the talks.

Seeking to build a broader consensus and strengthen Arafat's hands at the negotiations, the delegates were hoping to see him on Friday.

PROBLEMS DEFERRED

In more than six years of interim peace efforts, Israel and the Palestinians have deferred decisions on the most sensitive problems dividing them.

A senior Israeli source said Arafat also met one-to-one with Barak's chief negotiator, Public Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, late Wednesday. "The gaps are still very wide but Arafat understands how large an opportunity there is to reach an agreement," the source said.

Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, an architect of the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian Oslo peace accords, said in Jerusalem he believed the leaders would talk about swapping land.

A land swap deal might entail exchanging sovereign Israeli territory adjoining the Gaza Strip for West Bank areas populated by Jewish settlers that Israel wants to annex.

Clinton summoned the parties to the site of the breakthrough Egyptian-Israeli 1978 Camp David Accords in a bid to seal a Middle East deal before he leaves office in January.

Aides described his departure as partly a tactical move to force the two sides to deal directly with one another.

Barak's spokesman Gadi Baltiansky suggested the talks might even continue after Clinton is due to depart on July 19 for a summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations in Japan.

"We are prepared to remain as long as necessary. We could continue while the president is away," Baltiansky said.

ISRAELIS PESSIMISTIC

An opinion poll broadcast by Israel Radio showed about half of the Israeli public believe the summit will fail to bring a final settlement and are expecting violence. But it also showed that 60 percent supported Barak's peace moves and 53.7 percent thought he had a mandate to make concessions.

Away from the summit, US Defence Secretary William Cohen faced Chinese anger after Israel bowed to pressure from Washington and cancelled a $250 million sale of the Phalcon airborne radar system to Beijing.

The Israeli De fence Ministry said in a statement that Barak would discuss with US officials "ways to compensate industry in the framework of future business with the Americans" for the scrapped export deal.



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