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January 7, 2000/29 Tevet 5760, Vol. 52, No.18
Peace talks follow unclear path
MICHAEL SHAPIRO
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Predictions that peace talks between Israel and Syria would be difficult appeared to be on the mark as officials got down to business this week. As the talks resumed Jan. 3 in Shepherdstown, W.Va., the United States was already playing down expectations that the new round of talks would lead to an agreement.
"I think it's fair to say that Charles Dickens' novel 'Great Expectations' is not the novel that is being read by the negotiators and the working-level officials," State Department spokesman James Rubin said on Monday, shortly after the talks began. "We do not expect to be able to achieve a core agreement in one round of negotiations," he said of the talks, which have been billed as intensive and open-ended.
Israeli and Syrian negotiators, who were expected to get down to the nitty-gritty negotiations that could pave the way for a peace deal that would end their 50-year state of war, had trouble agreeing on where to start the talks. Israel wanted to discuss normalizing relations and security arrangements first, while Syria wanted to begin with discussions on an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. The two sides are also expected to discuss water rights.
Their differences led to the cancellation Monday evening of an expected three-way meeting involving President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa. By Tuesday afternoon, however, Rubin said that Dickens' "Bleak House" also was not an appropriate novel, and that the joint meeting was held later that day.
During his daily briefing at Shepherd College, Rubin announced that the "procedural hurdle" had been overcome and that "all of the issues will be discussed in the coming few days." He did not say what the hurdle was, but said committees had been formed to deal with the key topics.
Rubin said U.S. officials were not surprised by the talks' slow start. "We always expect there to be problems in this kind of a negotiation, and that's why we're here to overcome them," he said.
For his part, Clinton described both sides in the talks as "very serious."
"I think they both want an agreement," he said at the Oval Office on Jan. 4, taking questions after nominating Alan Greenspan to another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Asked about reports that Israel is seeking at least $17 billion in aid to cover the security costs of a peace treaty with Syria, Clinton said the United States is "attempting to ascertain what the general outlines of the costs would be."
The Israel daily Ha'aretz reported on Jan. 3, without citing sources, that Barak has asked the United States for $17 billion in aid. The request includes funding for new Apache helicopters, a ground station for gathering information from U.S. satellites and Tomahawk cruise missiles, which would allow Israel to strike distant countries. The aid request includes funding to help transfer army camps from the Golan to inside the Green Line.
Rubin called the reports "wildly premature." But the president acknowledged that there will be costs associated with an Israeli-Syrian peace deal.
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