Clinton Tries to Sell Arafat on Peace Plan

With continuing violence lengthening the already enormous odds against success, President Clinton tried Tuesday to coax Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat into accepting a U.S.-drafted framework to restart the moribund Middle East peace process.

Clinton and Arafat, originally scheduled to meet for 90 minutes or less, conferred for almost 3 1/2 hours in two separate sessions, ending after 10 p.m. what the White House called “serious discussions” that also included a renewed call by Clinton for efforts to curb Middle East violence. White House Press Secretary Jake Siewert said Arafat “agreed to intensify his efforts” to halt the violence, including a resumption of cooperation with Israeli security services to combat terrorism.

“The [U.S.] president told his [peace] team that he thought it was a useful meeting,” Siewert said.

Clinton will telephone Israel’s caretaker prime minister, Ehud Barak, today as well as other regional leaders, Siewert said. He said there were no plans for Arafat to return to the White House.

Palestinian officials said Arafat planned to report on the talks to a meeting of Arab foreign ministers Thursday in Cairo before telling Clinton whether he would accept the U.S. plan.

Negotiators for the Palestinians disclosed Tuesday that the framework would produce a Palestinian state split into at least three small “cantons” surrounded by Israeli territory. Arafat, who arrived in Washington after an overnight flight from his Gaza Strip headquarters, sought clarifications from Clinton about details of the plan.

Clinton’s objective is to wrap up a peace agreement settling all the remaining disputes in the half-century-old conflict before he leaves office Jan. 20.

President-elect George W. Bush said Tuesday that he supports Clinton’s effort to make peace.

Clinton “is giving it the very best shot he can, and I certainly hope it works,” Bush told reporters in Austin, Texas.

On Capitol Hill, few lawmakers of either party commented on the Clinton-Arafat talks. One who did address the issue, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a prominent Republican, declared: “I give him [Clinton] credit for continuing to work at that. . . . I give him credit for trying to do anything he can do between now and the end of his term. It isn’t going to be easy.”

Clinton said last week that he would call off the U.S.-mediated peace process unless both Arafat and the Israeli caretaker prime minister, Ehud Barak, accepted the outline of a settlement that he unveiled Dec. 23. Barak grudgingly agreed, but Arafat said he could not decide without much more information as to how the framework would be converted into a comprehensive treaty.

P. J. Crowley, the White House spokesman on foreign policy, said Arafat asked a series of questions about the Clinton plan at the initial meeting. The president’s proposal was couched in generalities, leaving room for negotiations on details.

But Clinton has said that after almost seven years as the Israeli-Palestinian go-between, he is convinced that the only settlement that could win even reluctant acceptance from the historical enemies is “within the four corners I laid out.”

U.S. officials said that if Arafat accepts Clinton’s framework, an agreement is by no means assured. But if Arafat continues to balk, these officials said, there is no chance whatever of a settlement.

While Clinton and Arafat were meeting at the White House, the talk in Israel was of war, not peace. With polls showing that a peace deal would not save Barak from defeat in elections scheduled for Feb. 6, the caretaker prime minister said he is more interested in fighting terror than in signing an agreement.

“From our point of view of the situation at the moment, the behavior of Arafat and his positions, and the difficult terror attacks of the last few days--and in some of them members of the [Palestinian] Authority were involved--we cannot continue the contacts and talks with the Palestinians,” Barak said in an interview with state-run Israel Television.

Crowley said Clinton and Arafat also discussed “steps that can be taken to counteract the acts of terrorism.” He did not elaborate.

Before Arafat arrived at the White House, the Palestinian negotiating team issued a five-page critique of the Clinton peace plan. Although both Israeli and Palestinian officials have talked about the substance of the plan since Clinton presented it to them, it has never been officially published. The version put out by the Palestinians is the most comprehensive to be made public so far.

“The United States proposal seems to respond to Israeli demands while neglecting the basic Palestinian need: a viable state,” the Palestinian document says.

The report says Clinton called for Israel to turn over to the Palestinians as much as 96% of the West Bank and Gaza. But, it says, that reflects only territory Israel has long acknowledged as being under occupation, excluding land in the vicinity of Jerusalem and Bethlehem that was seized from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War but has since been formally annexed by Israel.

Although the Clinton plan would reportedly give the Palestinians far more territory than they now possess, the Palestinian report says the plan would divide the proposed state into three separate districts surrounded by Israeli territory and connected only by Jewish-only and Arab-only roads.

On the emotional issue of the future of Jerusalem, the report says that Clinton proposed that the Palestinians be given sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods while Israel retain Jewish neighborhoods. But that plan, the Palestinians say, would “result in Palestinian islands within the city separated from one another.”

As for the other hot-button issue of the talks, Palestinian refugees, the Palestinian report says the Clinton plan “reflects a wholesale adoption of the Israeli position” that refugees can return to Israel only with the OK of the Israeli government.

In Jerusalem, Barak said he would send negotiators to Washington if Clinton asked them to come, providing the Palestinians resume security cooperation with Israel and “the violence ends.”

But he seemed to be preparing the public for the failure of talks and the prospect of a lengthy confrontation with the Palestinians.

The lack of a negotiated settlement, he told a panel of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, “entails a much greater chance of regional escalation. In the framework of escalation, the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan will also be at risk.”

Barak said he had instructed the army to prepare for a unilateral separation between Israel and the Palestinian-controlled territories in the West Bank and Gaza and to continue its campaign of assassinating Palestinian militants.

The army has carried out what it calls “targeted actions” against at least eight militants since November. The Palestinians call the attacks political assassinations, and the mainstream Fatah movement of the Palestine Liberation Organization has vowed to retaliate by carrying out attacks inside Israel.

Polls show Barak trailing right-wing Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon badly in the run-up to the special election that Barak triggered by resigning last month.

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Kempster reported from Washington and Curtius from Jerusalem.