Vatican Wants Role In Jerusalem Accord

The Vatican wants a say in trying to bring the Israeli-Palestinian talks to a peaceful accord.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright interrupted her flight home from an Asian tour to meet Tuesday with the Vatican's foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, on the failed Israeli-Palestinian talks at Camp David in July.

The Vatican made clear during the talks that it, along with Israel and the Palestinians, holds its own distinct position on the city, sacred to Christians, Jews and Muslims alike.

The talks deadlocked over rival claims by Israel and the Palestinians to Jerusalem as a capital. Palestinians said they would accept nothing less than full sovereignty over east Jerusalem, home to all the city's most important religious sites.

But the Vatican has a different vision for Jerusalem, long-held and so strongly felt that Pope John Paul II publicly reminded Camp David's powerbrokers of it during the talks.

Urging all sides "not to overlook the importance of the spiritual dimension of the city of Jerusalem," John Paul repeated the Holy See's insistence that international oversight - "a special statute, internationally guaranteed" - would best safeguard the city's holy sites and all its religions.

In February, the Palestinians and the Vatican signed an accord that, among other conditions regarding Palestinian territory calls for international safeguards of freedom of religion in Jerusalem.

A suggested compromise involving Israel sharing sovereignty over parts of Arab East Jerusalem, captured by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, failed to fly at the summit.

Sacred to three monotheistic faiths, the city is the main obstacle to peace in the region.

Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are close together in Arab East Jerusalem, and claims to authority over them are manifold. Keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for instance, are held by five branches of Christianity.

The peace lobby is counting down the days to the agreed Sept. 13 target for a deal to settle once and for all the issues put off in seven years of interim deals -- Jerusalem, borders, whether Jewish settlers can stay in lands claimed by Arafat, and whether Palestinian refugees can go back to Israel.

All sides have different proposals. Arafat has talked of an open city, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak wants sovereignty though he is willing to cede shared control over areas in the East. The Vatican earlier this year proposed a special statute allowing for international guardianship of the city.

Albright said neither party wanted this, though it has a precedent in a 1947 U.N. resolution calling for a Palestinian and a Jewish state with Jerusalem as an international enclave.

Before leaving Tokyo on Monday, Albright said that the United States was ready to return to negotiations once the parties had caught their breath.

With views being gathered in the Arab world and Barak apparently ready to comprmise, it seemed she wanted to add another piece to the incomplete jigsaw puzzle of peace.

"This is a unique situation where two people want to have the same area and the same places and have a call on saying the holy places are holy to each of them in different ways," she said.

"There has to be some compromise. It's not possible for both sides to have 100 percent."

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