From: Eddie Chumney
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: Israel in the News: July 11, 1998
Friday, July 10, 1998 16 Tammuz 5758
Jerusalem Post - Internet Edition
Senior
official: US inconsistent mediator
By
JAY BUSHINSKY
JERUSALEM
(July 10) - A senior government official
yesterday
criticized the US negotiating team for
being
"inconsistent" - initially accepting and
endorsing
Israeli proposals, but then repudiating
them
after receiving negative reactions from
Palestinian
Authority leaders.
Meanwhile,
two senior PA officials, Saeb Erekat and
Nabil
Shaath, left for Washington yesterday at the
invitation
of the State Department for talks about
the
prospective IDF pullback in the West Bank.
The
senior official would neither confirm nor deny a
Channel
1 report that the US is working on sponsoring
a
meeting between Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai
and
the PA's deputy chairman, Mahmoud Abbas.
The
official also denied that Secretary of State
Madeleine
Albright had said the US would terminate
its
mediation effort by the end of the month.
He
described this notion as "a tendentious leak" and
said
nothing to this effect came up in a telephone
conversation
yesterday between Albright and Prime
Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu.
"She
did not say any of those things," the official
said.
He
added that the leak came from Washington, not
Jerusalem.
He
alleged there was an American tendency to
"vacillate
and backtrack" when dealing with issues
germaine
to the peace process. He indicated this
could
undercut Netanyahu's intention to announce the
government's
readiness to implement a 13.1%
redeployment
in the West Bank.
One
example is Israel's insistence on the formal
annulment
of the Palestinian Covenant's articles that
call
for the elimination of Israel.
Netanyahu
insists that this be done by the Palestine
National
Council, as required by the Palestine
Liberation
Organization's own regulations. Albright
reportedly
does not go along with Netanyahu on this.
Netanyahu
met separately with President Ezer Weizman
and
Labor Party Chairman Ehud Barak yesterday to
update
them about the peace talks, but nothing was
said
publicly by any of them about the pertinent
details.
The
silence prompted speculation that Netanyahu may
have
advised them of plans to ask the cabinet to
approve
the 13.1% withdrawal.
However,
the prevailing response to the
Netanyahu-Weizman-Barak
discussions in the electronic
media
was that they do not augur an early
breakthrough
on the Israeli-Palestinian track.
"I
conveyed to the prime minister our conviction that
the
peace process needs to move on, and it's time to
act
on the pullout and settle the business," Barak
said
after the meeting.
"I
heard more details on the state of affairs and
more
than that I don't want to add, because it's the
prime
minister's prerogative," he added.
The
official explained that beyond the "virtually
10%"
of the West Bank which would be handed over to
the
PA, an additional "3.1%" would be "nominally
Palestinian"
while the IDF would continue to maintain
"full
security control."
He
described the terrain to be "nominally
Palestinian"
as a totally unpopulated region in which
the
IDF does not maintain any fixed positions.
"But
it would retain the right to enter in case of
Palestinian
activity deemed inimical to Israeli
security,"
he said.
For
example, he said any new construction would have
to
be based on "mutual consent," with Israel having
veto
power in this domain.
This
formula, the official said, was developed by US
envoy
Dennis Ross as a convenient way to satisfy the
Palestinian
desire to see a larger IDF pullback,
while
assuring Israel of "all the security you want."
He
said, however, that the PA has not agreed to this
idea
and implied that the American intermediaries
might
eventually abandon it for that reason.
In
a telephone conversation Wednesday, Albright
assured
PA Chairman Yasser Arafat she would reject
any
Israeli amendments to the US bridging proposal
for
the redeployment, Palestinian sources said
yesterday.
The sources said Albright had acknowledged
that
Netanyahu was seeking revisions in the plan.
"Secretary
Albright informed President Arafat in a
telephone
call on Wednesday that the US
administration
will not amend or change its
initiative,"
Tayeb Abdel Rahim, the general secretary
of
the Palestinian presidency, told Reuters.
"The
Palestinian Authority adheres to the American
initiative
and rejects any changes," he added.
At
a news conference in Ramallah yesterday, PA Higher
Education
Minister Hanan Ashrawi said the trip to the
US
by Erekat and Shaath would not change the PA
position.
She said the PA will not reopen issues
already
settled with Washington.
"It
seems that the US is virtually unable to deal
with
Netanyahu and this affects its credibility,
influence
and interests," she said. "The visit of
Erekat
and Shaath will be short and is meant only to
listen
to what Albright has to say."
Albright
said the PA has rejected Netanyahu's
conditions
for an IDF redeployment, including the
convening
of the Palestine National Council to amend
the
Palestinian Covenant and a multi-stage
redeployment.
Ashrawi
warned that the situation in the territories
is
"highly unstable. There is the feeling of public
anger."
US
contacts with the PA yesterday included a meeting
between
Arafat and US Consul-General John Herbst.
Palestinian
sources said Arafat asserted that the
Israeli
refusal to accept the US plan is holding up
the
implementation of the interim accords.
(Michal
Yudelman, Steve Rodan, and Mohammed Najib
contributed
to this report.)
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Friday, July 10, 1998 16 Tammuz 5758
Jerusalem Post - Internet Edition
Assad
visit will boost French Middle East role
By
JAY BUSHINSKY
JERUSALEM
(July 10) - Syrian President Hafez Assad's
state
visit to France next week will provide his
official
hosts with a golden opportunity to upgrade
their
involvement in the Middle East peace process,
especially
on the Israel-Syria and Israel-Lebanon
tracks,
a senior government source said yesterday.
It
will enable President Jacques Chirac and his
foreign
minister, Hubert Vedrine, to seek Assad's
participation
in a French-sponsored international
conference
in which the other main Arab participants
would
be Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
The
source said Israel did not expect to receive an
invitation
and has opposed this initiative from its
inception.
But
the possibility of a breakthrough in the impasse
over
Israel's offer to implement UN Security Council
Resolution
425 by withdrawing the IDF from the
security
zone in southern Lebanon was seen as a
possible
outcome of the impending dialogue between
the
French and Syrian heads of state.
Success
in facilitating implementation of Resolution
425
by convincing Assad to approve the Lebanese
Army's
assumption of responsibility for security in
the
south would be a major progression from France's
role
in expediting the recent exchange of Hizbullah
prisoners
and the remains of their colleagues for the
body
of Third Petty Officer Itamar Ilya.
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