Clinton Plunges into Details for Mideast DealPresident Bill Clinton kept hopes for a Middle East peace deal alive on Monday, diving into gruelling, marathon negotiations on the nitty-gritty details of any deal.Clinton, who worked until dawn after returning to Camp David on Sunday from a Group of Eight summit in Japan, later met small groups of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at his presidential retreat to work methodically through all outstanding issues, his spokesman said. "He will remain here as long as he believes we have some prospect of success," White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said. "It's our judgment at this point that the president, working intensively with the negotiators, is the most productive use of time in order to get to the agreement," he said. Lockhart described the talks, which on their 14th day have lasted longer than the 1978 Egyptian-Israeli peace talks, as "substantive and constructive ... exhaustive and exhausting". Palestinian officials said small teams had met dealing with borders and security, Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem, the issue all sides agree is the key hurdle to a final peace deal. Israeli officials and diplomatic sources expected an important three-way meeting between Clinton, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to try to break the Jerusalem deadlock. Lockhart said he would not rule out such a meeting on Monday evening, but declined to discuss the substance, observing a news blackout. Rather than set a deadline, he said Clinton was making a "rolling assessment" of the usefulness of the talks, based on the potential for an agreement. "Should he come to the conclusion that the substance of the discussions and the atmosphere of the discussions do not have the potential to lead to an agreement, then he will act accordingly and bring these discussions to an end," he added. Israeli officials said they expected the outlook for the talks to become clearer in the next day or two. |
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