World

Barak In Hasty Trip To U.S.

April 7, 2000 / 11:30 PM EDT / AP

Denounced by Yasser Arafat as an extremist, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is making an 18-hour visit here to plan for an orderly retreat from Lebanon and to talk about more territorial concessions to the Palestinians.

He also faces grim news about Syria. A Syrian response to President Clinton's overtures to reopen peace talks are being dismissed by the State Department as inadequate.

Barak flew in at 3:15 a.m., had some rest and conferred with his aides in preparation for talks beginning in the afternoon.

He was described by Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Regev as "very serious about the series of meetings he has today."

Asked if there is now something for the Clinton administration to work with, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a reporter Monday, "There isn't so far."

"There is not much give," she said of the Syrian position on a land-for-peace deal with Israel. "But I do think it's important that they responded," she said.

Earlier, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said: "We have not heard anything...that we believe could address seriously the remaining gaps."

Still, Barak is saying he remains ready to make tough decisions for peace a signal to the Israeli people he would surrender land to the Arabs and negotiations continue here with the Palestinians despite Arafat's assertion they were a waste of time.

Mr. Clinton wants to pick up the pace though, and is on the record as supporting what he calls Palestinian "aspirations."

In a sour send-off, Arafat called Barak "the leader of extremists" in Israel. That is the sort of rhetoric aimed at the last prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for taking rigid stands on Arafat's demands.

But Rubin said the talks at Bolling Air Force Base in southeast Washington where midlevel negotiators for Israel and the Palestine Authority have been meeting recently were not a waste of time. He also suggested, without criticizing Arafat directly, that a lid be placed on name-calling on both sides.

With mid-September as a deadline, the Palestinians want virtually all the West Bank for a state, and they want part of Jerusalem for a capital. They already control 40 percent of the land held by Jordan from 1948 to 1967 and most of Gaza.

Barak is due to surrender another chunk of the West Bank in June. The details are among the topics under discussion in the current round of negotiations.

Asked here by PResident Clinton, Barak had talks scheduled at Blair House with senior U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross, and with Albright and national security adviser Sandy Berger. He then crosses Pennsylvania Avenue for an hour with Mr. Clinton at the White House.

In a policy shift based on circumstances, the administration is beginning to help Israel arrange withdrawal of its troops from southern Lebanon in July.

Supported by a friendly Lebanese militia, the troops have shielded vilages in northern Israel from rocket attack by Hezbollah guerrillas backed by Iran and Syria. The United States was unable to negotiate an agreement to curb increasingly deadly guerrilla attacks on Israeli soldiers, however, and Barak, mindful of the toll's impact on the Israeli public, has decided to abandon the strip.

The United States and Israel had hoped the retreat could be part of an overall agreement with Syria and Lebanon, one that presumably would have guaranteed the border's safety.

But U.S.-hosted talks in Shepherdstown, W.Va., broke down in mid-January, and the Clinton administration decided only recently to go along with and to facilitate a unilateral Israeli retreat.