U.S., Israel Fail to Break Mideast Talks Deadlock

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday failed to find the elusive way to break the deadlock in the Middle East peace process--despite a 90-minute meeting, their first official contact since Israel shot down a U.S. plan for summit talks with the Palestinians.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said Albright and Netanyahu will meet again today. American and Israeli experts continued the talks late Wednesday after Albright and Netanyahu left the meeting room in a Washington hotel.

Although the United States has acted as broker in countless negotiations between Israel and its Arab antagonists, the current talks mark the first time the two allies have faced each other as adversaries.

The U.S.-Israel standoff developed when the Clinton administration, frustrated by its inability over the last 14 months to secure agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, offered its own plan to settle a festering dispute over how much West Bank territory the Israelis now must turn over to Palestinian control.

The Palestinians accepted the U.S. proposal, but Israel rejected it, leaving the administration in the awkward position of negotiating directly with the Israelis.

As he arrived in Washington on Wednesday, Netanyahu said he hoped to settle his differences with the administration but cautioned that he “will not compromise our security needs.”

In hopes of resolving the disagreement, President Clinton had directed Albright to cancel her plans to accompany him Tuesday as he flew to Europe for a meeting of the major industrialized nations.

Albright intended to devote only one day to talks with Netanyahu but agreed to a second day of meetings. She plans to leave for Europe tonight.

The U.S.-Israeli disagreement has divided American Jews and other groups concerned about the Middle East into opposing camps, fighting their own battles with letters, newspaper and television advertising and calls to radio talk shows.

For instance, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, joined by a number of other Jewish groups, complained that the administration was trying to pressure Israel into accepting a deal that would damage its security.

The Institute for Religious Values, an evangelical Christian organization, was even more vehement, accusing Clinton of jeopardizing Israeli security.

And a group called the Committee for a Secure Peace, headed by former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, a Minnesota Republican, is running a television commercial featuring a 6-year-old Palestinian girl singing of her desire to be “a suicide warrior,” a scene that the group said was recorded from Palestinian television. The announcer intones: “While Israel is being pressured to give up more land, Palestinian children are being taught to be terrorists.”

But Americans for Peace Now, the U.S. affiliate of a Jewish peace-advocacy group, urged other Jewish organizations to support the administration’s approach, calling it the best path to Israel’s long-term security. The group said Jewish criticism of Clinton’s latest effort to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations was distressing because the administration “is universally acknowledged to be the friendliest U.S. government toward Israel in the history of the bilateral relationship.”

In an open letter, the peace group said the administration’s plan was “correct” because it called on both Israel and the Palestinians to abide by commitments they made in the 1993 peace accords negotiated in Oslo and signed on the White House lawn.

Neither U.S. nor Israeli officials would discuss details of Albright’s Wednesday meeting with Netanyahu. David Bar-Illan, a senior Netanyahu advisor, said, “It was a good meeting in a productive atmosphere.” Rubin said the meeting was an effort “to overcome the remaining differences and thereby put the Middle East peace process back on track.”