Clinton 'encouraged' by PM Barak talks

Clinton 'encouraged' by PM Barak talks

WASHINGTON (AFP): U.S. President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to speed up the Israeli-Palestinian track facing looming deadlines but had no breakthroughs to announce on any of the stalled Mideast peace fronts, officials said.

The two stretched a planned one-hour meeting into four at the White House on Wednesday for an exhaustive review of all the troubled Middle East peace tracks in which Clinton is actively mediating.

"The president feels coming out of this very encouraged there is an intensification, a renewed energy on the Palestinian track and he looks forward to building on that momentum," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Barak, who left Washington for Jerusalem at midnight Tuesday after a 21-hour visit, made no official statement after the meeting, but an Israeli official traveling with him reveled some details of the discussions.

"Barak and Clinton agreed to accelerate the Palestinian track," said the Israeli official on condition of anonymity.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has accused Barak of foot- dragging on a framework agreement due in May that is to produce a final accord in September and the U.S. official acknowledged that "There are gaps to be overcome."

"We are in the midst of dealing with the real heart and soul of the hardest issues ... and it is incumbent on both sides to come up with new ideas," said the U.S. official.

Arafat was due here for talks on April 20 and the official said that meeting combined with the ongoing talks between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators at the Bolling air base in Washington "will give us a good sense of where we are."

Washington is putting pressure on both sides to meet the September deadline. Arafat has threatened to declare Palestinian statehood in September if a final comprehensive accord is not reached by that date.

"We have always played a constructive role in this (but) ... obviously it is up to the parties themselves to overcome these and reach agreement on these hard issues and there's no substitute for that," the U.S. official said.

The bulk of the talks here were on the Palestinian track, the official said, but also Clinton briefed Barak on the responses Syrian President Hafez al-Assad gave him after their meeting in Geneva last month.

Clinton said before the meeting that Assad's responses to his proposals in Geneva were unsatisfactory but added: "There are still differences, but it is no bleaker than before we met."

Before Barak's departure, the Israeli official said that "the door is open" to a resumption of talks with Syria.

Clinton pressed Barak on Israel's planned sale of airborne warning and control systems (AWACS) to China which Washington has protested but failed to resolve the dispute, said the U.S. official, who added they had only agreed to discuss the issue further.

Barak also pledged to follow through with plans for a troop withdrawal from the volatile buffer zone in southern Lebanon which has sparked fears of instability in the volatile region that could ultimately draw Israel and Syria into war.

In another development, Israeli settlers began unauthorized work on Wednesday on extending a settlement in the occupied West Bank in the second such challenge in as many days to Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

The day after launching a similar project in the nearby settlement of Efrat, the Council of Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip sent in the bulldozers to prepare the ground on a hill just outside the colony of Har Gilo.

Some 50 settlers faced a similar number of activists from the Peace Now movement brandishing placards reading "settlements mean war."

Police separated the two groups as they threatened to come to blows, defusing the confrontation.