Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met Monday in a bid to revive the faltering peace process, but no news filtered out to indicate whether they were set to resume substantive talks.
The two leaders did not call a press conference at the end of their meeting, which took place at Barak's private house in Kohav Yair, just north of Tel Aviv. A statement issued by Barak's office said "no further details about the discussions would be made public".
Even before they met, both sides did their best to dampen excessive optimism.
Barak's office said the aim was to improve trust between them and to exchange views, but made it clear that the meeting was not supposed to be the setting for "point-by-point negotiations on all the outstanding issues".
However, a later statement said the meeting -- the first between the two men since the collapse of July's Camp David summit -- was taking place in a "very good and very positive atmosphere".
US President Bill Clinton spoke by phone to both men, urging them to move the peace process forward.
"The two leaders told President Clinton they were determined to deploy every effort and exploit every chance to reach an agreement," said another statement from Barak's office.
"The prime minister and chairman Arafat also assured President Clinton that they had given instructions to their negotiating teams who are to go to Washington in the next few hours to do everything possible to overcome their differences, and to spare neither time nor effort in examining all possible ways to achieve progress," it said.
Israel radio and the ITIM news agency reported that negotiations between the two sides would resume in Washington on Tuesday, led by acting Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami and top negotiator Gilad Sher on the Israeli side, and senior negotiator Saeb Erakat and Mohammed Dahlan, head of preventive security in the Gaza Strip, for the Palestinians.
Talks between the two sides have been frozen since Camp David, where the main stumbling block proved to be the fate of east Jerusalem, captured and annexed by Israel in 1967 in a move not recognized by the international community.
Barak has said repeatedly since Camp David that there can be no progress in the talks if Arafat does not show "more flexibility" and refuses to take as the basis for talks the ideas and proposals put forward by Clinton at Camp David.
These ideas center on a number of possible solutions for sharing sovereignty over east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.
However, on the Palestinian side, information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said no progress could be made unless Barak came closer to the Palestinian positions.
"There will be no breakthrough if (Barak) insists in his position on imposing Israeli sovereignty on occupied east Jerusalem or denying the right of the refugees and expressing the wish to annex parts of the West Bank," he told AFP.
The Palestinians also accuse Barak -- who has no parliamentary majority and faces possible early elections -- of focusing more on his domestic woes than on the peace process, which was due to have been wrapped up by September 13, but has been floundering since the collapse of Camp David.
The two sides remain at loggerheads on all key issues, including the size and shape of a future Palestinian state and the fate of 3.7 million Palestinian refugees.
Several dozen settlers and inhabitants of Kohav Yair gathered Monday to protest against the "concessions" they claimed Barak was ready to make, the radio said, adding that the security services and police kept the demonstrators away from the area of Barak's house -- KOHAV YAIR, Israel (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
