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January 21, 2000/7 Shevat 5760, Vol. 52, No.20
Barak moves on after break in talks
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak did not waste any time bemoaning Syria's decision to postpone indefinitely the next round of peace talks. Instead, within hours of formally acknowledging the postponement, Barak and Foreign Minister David Levy met Jan. 17 with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and his top deputies for a four-hour working session that lasted deep into the night.
Little of substance was divulged from this meeting, beyond the information that it had been held in a cordial atmosphere and that, in the words of an Israeli source, the spirit of mutual confidence between the two leaders had been enhanced.
The immediate interpretation put on the Barak-Arafat meeting by Israeli and Arab commentators was that Barak was "playing off" the Palestinians against the Syrians. Arafat has in recent weeks called on Israel not to forget the Palestinian track as Barak renews negotiations with Syria - and Arafat was expected to reiterate the theme at a meeting later this week in Washington with President Clinton.
Barak has already lost some of his credit with Arafat after announcing earlier this week that Israel would postpone a redeployment from an additional 6.1 percent of the West Bank, a move originally slated to take place this week.
Lending credence to the playing-off theory is the fact that after Syria delivered Barak an ultimatum - either commit in advance to a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights or Syria will not turn up for the round of high-level talks originally slated for this week - Barak instantly tried to outflank Syria. Beaming with confidence and good cheer, he told reporters Jan. 17 that Syria should "take all the time it needs" before returning to the conference table. By next morning, his aides were reporting a long and pleasant meeting with the Palestinians.
Barak himself has consistently denied any desire or intention to play off the Palestinian and Syrian negotiating tracks against each other. On the contrary, Barak claims, he is trying to meet all the deadlines he set for himself at the start of his tenure: a framework agreement with the Palestinians by mid-February; a withdrawal from southern Lebanon by July; a full peace agreement with Syria in the summer; and a peace agreement with the Palestinians by September.
As the end of January looms, the mid-February date seems unattainable. Indeed, most Israeli observers assume that Barak and Arafat spent at least part of their long nocturnal meeting discussing elegant ways of extending this deadline without allowing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to lose momentum. But Barak's team insists that, despite minor juggling with the calendar, the broad strategy is still on target.
They also maintain that the Syrian postponement is no more than a tactical delay. The talks, they predict confidently, will resume very soon. They point to the fact that Syria, as well as Israel, agreed to send lower-level experts to Washington in the coming days in an effort to keep the peace process moving forward.
Barak's aides also point to the draft of an evolving peace treaty between Israel and Syria, leaked in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz last week, as evidence of the solid progress that has been made. The draft, while registering divergent Israeli and Syrian positions on several key unresolved issues, represents a great deal of progress that had not been reflected in the public sparring between Jerusalem and Damascus, or indeed by the personal coldness radiated by Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa during the first two rounds of the talks. At the same time, though, the leaking of the draft may have led to the Syrian postponement.
While the draft showed that Israel had gained several important concessions during the negotiations, including a Syrian willingness to create full diplomatic relations and open their borders to trade, it did not indicate that Syria had won in return any concessions - particularly an Israeli commitment to withdraw from the Golan.
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