World

Albright Lobbies For Mideast Peace

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 6, 1998 / 11:29 AM EDT / CBS

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Tuesday there was still "much work to do" is Israel and the Palestinians are to reach a new interim peace deal at a Washington summit later this month.

"I think we all know that time is not on our side, and if we don't move quickly, we may find ourselves without...an agreement," Albright told reporters after two hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Albright, who also held talks with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Jericho, is trying to narrow gaps before a summit on a land-for-security plan that is intended to break 19 months of deadlock in the peace talks.

After her meeting with Arafat in Jericho, CBS News State Department Reporter Charles Wolfson reports that Albright said, "Time is not on our side. If we don't move quickly, we may find ourselves without a process of peacemaking, without agreement and without hope of achieving an Arab-Israeli peace."

After her meeting with Arafat, Albright held a second meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

The secretary of state is scheduled to hold a three-way meeting with Netanyahu and Arafat on Wednesday, State Department spokesman James Rubin said.

Only hours after the Israeli prime minister's first meeting with Albright on Tuesday, the U.S. diplomatic push faced a new obstacle when Netanyahu's office announced that a Jewish caravan settlement in largely Arab Hebron would be shored up with "sturdy and permanent" buildings.

Albright has been pushing for a "time-out" in Jewish settlement activities. Asked if the proposed Israeli construction represented a complication, she told reporters: "I don't want to comment on this specifically."

"We would hope very much that there would not be any unilateral actions that complicate the issues that we are trying to deal with here," Albright said when asked if the Israeli action made it more difficult for her to build Palestinian confidence in making peace with Israel.

Albright is on only her third visit to the region since she took office in January 1997. On her flight to Israel early on Tuesday, she said her two-day trip would not by itself end the peacemaking impasse.

Instead, she said she aimed to "push the process forward" so Netanyahu and Arafat could seal a deal when they meet President Clinton in the Washington area later in October.

Israel has made a troop withdrawal from a further 13 percent of the West Bank conditional on a Palestinian crackdown on Moslem militants and other political steps.

"If the Palestinians do their part, we shall do our part, and we shall have an agreement," Netanyahu said. "The most important thing is...first of all the operative war on terrorism."

Prospects of an accord rose last week when Netanyahu and Arafat met Mr. Clinton at the White House and agreed to the forthoming summit.

But Netanyahu cautioned that a deal was far from sewn up.

"I wouldn't say we are at square one, but we are certainly not at the end of the process," he said, adding he would not rule out a three-way meeting with Albright and Arafat on Wednesday.

Asked by reporters after the talks whether there had been any progress with the Palestinians on security, Netanyahu's aide, David Bar-Illan, replied: "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

The American land-for-security plan is part of a wider American initiative to conclude agreement on outstanding interim issues and open the way to talks on a final peace settlement.