Albright Offers Netanyahu a Polite Deadline

LONDON — Although Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s latest effort to revive the Middle East peace process ended Tuesday without any agreement, she held out the prospect of new top-level talks in Washington next week.

Albright met several times here over the past two days with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Their negotiations, however, failed to break the impasse over how much more land in the West Bank should be handed over by Israel to the Palestinians.

“We have made some progress, which we hope will facilitate agreement in the coming days,” Albright said at a news conference. “If the issues are resolved, President Clinton is prepared to invite the parties [Netanyahu and Arafat] to Washington on May 11.”

Clinton’s session with Netanyahu and Arafat would be aimed at launching negotiations toward a final peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, talks dealing with the most intractable issues dividing them, such as the fate of Jerusalem. But that White House meeting won’t occur unless Netanyahu agrees before then to go along with a U.S. plan for Israel to transfer 13% more of the West Bank to the Palestinians.

The Clinton administration’s offer of a meeting next Monday can be viewed as a polite way of giving Netanyahu a five-day deadline in which to accept the U.S. plan for the West Bank, which the Israeli leader has so far adamantly rejected. “It’s our experience that without a deadline to concentrate the effort, nothing happens,” observed one U.S. official involved in the talks.

If Netanyahu yields in the next few days on Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank, he will obtain two benefits: the White House session with Clinton and, even more important, the start of the final negotiations--talks that he has long said he favors.

But if the Israeli leader keeps balking at the U.S. West Bank proposal, he runs the risk that the administration will abandon its effort to work out a Middle East peace settlement or put the issue on the back burner.

Albright insisted Tuesday that “we are not going to walk away from the peace process. It is too important to the United States, to Israel and to our friends.”

In her remarks Tuesday, Albright also noted that “Chairman Arafat has accepted our ideas in principle.” She made no such claim about Netanyahu, leaving unmistakably clear that the Israeli leader has been the main obstacle to concluding an agreement about the West Bank in the two days of talks here.

Before leaving London, the Israeli leader told a news conference: “We have not resolved the issue of the second redeployment. There has been progress, even significant progress in some of the areas, not all of them. There are still areas that remain unsolved.”

U.S. officials--joined by British Prime Minister Tony Blair--had made a concerted effort here to end a 14-month stalemate and get the Middle East peace process moving. Clinton himself talked to Albright twice in the two days she was here; Vice President Al Gore had spoken to her after his own Mideast swing last week.

Before these meetings started, Netanyahu, who has also insisted that Israel needs greater security guarantees from the Palestinians, had said he could not go along with the U.S. proposal to hand over 13% more of the West Bank. In public, he had said he could agree to no more than 9%, while in private he had suggested he might be willing to accept up to 11%. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have provided any details about what West Bank land is covered in these percentages.

As these talks wore on, though, Netanyahu said he could not make further concessions without talking to his Cabinet. “There are certain decisions which I can only take in Israel, with the government,” Netanyahu said.

U.S. officials later started suggesting that the White House meeting could be the launch of the final phase of peace negotiations. Under the Oslo accords signed on the White House lawn in 1993, Israel and the Palestinians are supposed to conclude a final peace settlement by May 4, 1999.

Besides Jerusalem, the issues in these final talks would include the borders between Israel and a possible Palestinian state, and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Monday’s session with the U.S. president “would set the tone for the discussions” over the next year, said State Department spokesman James P. Rubin.

At the Washington meeting, Clinton would see Netanyahu and Arafat at the same time. Albright met separately in London with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

She tried to persuade Netanyahu to accept the U.S. proposals in an initial round of talks that lasted more than four hours. He was unmoved. By Tuesday morning, it was clear Albright could not get Netanyahu to any agreement here, and her last meeting with him took only 15 minutes.

But she was polite and complimentary about him, telling reporters, “Prime Minister Netanyahu has been very helpful and constructive, and he is going back to talk to his Cabinet. . . . It is obviously up to Israel to decide what its security requirements are.” But she said she believed that the U.S. proposals are “fair and balanced and do not threaten Israeli security.”