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.