World

Peace Talks Extended

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 19, 1998 / 7:37 AM EDT / CBS

Israel had threatened to abandon the Mideast peace talks unless there is a deal by 10 P.M.(EDT) Wednesday night, but negotiators resolved differences on touchy security issues averting a threatened Israeli walkout, Palestinian negotiators said late Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, President Clinton was clearly frustrated. A senior administration official said Mr. Clinton believed there had been sufficient progress for an agreement but the Mideast leaders must make some tough decisions.

Wednesday night, the president was considering whether to make an unscheduled flight to Maryland to try to rescue the talks. Each side is blaming the other for today's crisis. A senior Israeli delegate told CBS News an early draft document contained none of the details Israel wants.

These are the points on which Israel is demanding hard specifics:

A reduction in Palestinian police forces
A plan for the confiscation of terrorist weapons
An extradition agreement for terrorists
A Palestinian charter that doesn't demand the destruction of Israel.

The Palestinians say they have agreed to a U.S. plan for Israeli security that includes CIA monitoring of the deal.

The Israeli threat represented a significant change in the tone of the summit, which broke for the night in the early hours of Wednesday on a much more optimistic note.

Palestinian negotiators said they and the Israelis had moved closer to a deal on land and security, reaching agreement on many details of a complicated package. Israeli statements, however, suggested that a deal was further off.

One of the Israeli officials said the delegation was already making preparations to pull out of the Wye Plantation, a secluded estate about 70 miles east of Washington.

He said the Palestinians wanted to get the next 13 percent of West Bank land without giving Israel anything in return. "There is no substantial (Palestinian) plan for the fight against terror," he added.

Palestinians said the Israeli threats to bolt the conference were a surprise. "We have no information of any crisis. If they want to leave now, it would look bad for them and we are not in trouble," a senior Palestinian delegate said.

Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian spokesman, called Israeli balking at a West Bank deal "a type of political blackmail" that shows "they are not serious in achieving an agreement."

"They are proposing day by day new demands," Tibi said. "The Americans and Palestinians are wanting very much to approve a deal. The ball is in the Israel court now."

The two sides face a May 1999 deadline to complete an interim peace deal that would include Israeli pullback of troops from the West Bank in exchange for guarantees of security from the Palestinians, who are seeking statehood in the final bargain. The deadline was set in the 1993 Oslo peace accord, signed at the White House.

Palestinias have threatened a unilateral declaration of statehood if the 1999 deadline passes without an accord. Israel has threatened unspecified "unilateral" acts of their own should the Palestinians do so.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat went to Wye Plantation last Thursday for what they thought would be a four-day summit supervised by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Clinton persuaded them to stay on and, dismayed by the gloomy atmosphere, he stepped in to mediate on five of the first six days. He seemed to have stopped a Palestinian grenade attack from wrecking the talks Monday.

Lockhart gave no hint of a crisis, saying that by early afternoon Wednesday Albright would brief Clinton on the talks and could advise him to return to the remote meeting site.

"She'll make a judgment on whether they need to continue working amongst themselves there today or whether it would be useful and productive for the president to return," he said.

An ongoing obstacle to the talks was thought to be Netanyahu's precarious political situation at home. Right-wing members of his fragile governing coaltion have threatened to oust the Israeli Prime Minister if he cedes too much land to Palestinians.