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By Charly Wegman JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were set to resume contacts Wednesday in an atmosphere soured by Israel's abrupt suspension and resumption of the faltering peace talks.
Israel blamed Tuesday's embarrassing about-face by Prime Minister Ehud Barak on a misunderstanding, but the Palestinians branded it a ploy designed to pressure their leader Yasser Arafat, and said full negotiations would not resume until they were given an explanation. "If they want to come to negotiate, we will come. If they want to play games, the Palestinians will not continue," said Palestinian negotiator, Hassan Asfour. Barak's office announced Tuesday that the government was declaring a "time-out" in the peace talks, accusing the Palestinians of failing to show the necessary will for progress in their efforts to reach an accord. But only hours later, his office announced that contacts would resume on Wednesday between Israeli negotiator and lawyer Gilad Sher and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat. Israel's Justice Minister Yossi Beilin described Tuesday's conflicting announcements, which come a week after a missed deadline for a final peace accord, as a "misunderstanding."
"We believe there is a solution and we don't have the luxury to waste time, even one day. There is no break in the negotiations and no one should be punished because of the [misunderstanding]," he added. There have been no formal high-level talks since the U.S.-hosted Camp David summit, aimed at hammering out a comprehensive peace agreement, collapsed on July 25th with no tangible results. The two sides failed to meet a September 13th deadline for a comprehensive deal - one of many missed target dates - but the Palestinians backed off from plans to declare an independent state on that date. "It is the Israeli policy of confusion and wasting time that the Barak government has been using for some time," Arafat's top aide, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said in Gaza. "The Israeli goal is to blackmail as it has in the past, and failed." An Israeli official said U.S. President Bill Clinton, anxious to clinch a Middle East peace deal before he leaves office, is expected by week's end to come up with new bridging proposals for Jerusalem, the most sensitive issue dividing them. Beilin, a key architect of the Oslo peace accords in 1993, said no agreement was possible without a resolution of Jerusalem and the disputed sacred site known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary. Arafat's number two, Mahmoud Abbas, insisted Tuesday on full Palestinian sovereignty over the site, the third holiest shrine in Islam, in an apparent toughening of their position. "We will not accept sovereignty of the United Nations or Islamic sovereignty or any joint sovereignty, it is either ours or not," he said to the WAFA news agency. The Israeli media said Barak's "zig-zagging" revealed confusion in his office. "Barak seems to have tried to pressure the Palestinians but blinked first because he is the one in a state of distress," Yediot Aharonot columnist Shimon Shiffer wrote. "The time left at his disposal to reach a final status arrangement is running out as the Knesset's [parliament] winter session nears. Barak knows that this Knesset is liable to bring about the end of his term in office," he added. And MP Yuval Steinitz, of the right-wing Likud, which is promoting an early elections bill, said: "This zig-zag policy shows that Barak has yielded to Palestinian pressure and is afraid of reaching an accord which he must then present to the voters of Israel." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"We did not want to stop the negotiations because we have no other partner and neither do they [the Palestinians]," he told Israeli public radio.
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