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Subject: Israel, Jordan Said to Be Near Agenda For Bilateral Peace Treaty
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 92 04:28:31 EST
Message-ID: <31.1992Oct30.042831@AmeriCast.com>

Israel, Jordan Said to Be Near Agenda For Bilateral Peace Treaty
Negotiations<By John M. Goshko=Washington Post Staff Writer=

One year after the Middle East peace talks began, a senior U.S.
official announced yesterday that Israel and Jordan are close to
agreement on which topics will be included in negotiations for a
peace treaty between the two countries.

The announcement by Edward P. Djerejian, assistant secretary of
state for Near Eastern affairs, that the two governments "are
very close to final agreement on an agenda" appeared to be a
genuine cause for optimism in a process where progress is meas-
ured by inches.

Speaking as the talks recessed until Nov. 9, Djerejian added that
Israel and Jordan now have a "substantive basis" for serious
negotiations. If the agenda is approved, it would be the first
mutually agreed document to emerge from the process and would be
grounds for optimism about the long-term durability of the peace
talks.

In addition to talking with Jordan, Israel has been negotiating
with Syria, Lebanon and Palestinians representing the Israeli-
occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. These other talks have been
bogged down for most of the year in procedural fights and only
recently have started to show hints of the kind of progress re-
ported yesterday in the Israeli-Jordanian negotiations.

In Israel, the news media reacted with excited observations that
an Israeli-Jordanian agreement on an agenda would mark Jordan's
first public statement of willingness to sign a peace treaty and
establish normal relations with the Jewish state. It also caused
a short-lived flurry of speculation that Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein would soon meet, although
Israeli officials said there are no plans for such a meeting.

U.S. officials, while more restrained, also described the impend-
ing agreement as having an importance that is more than merely
procedural. They said it shows that Arabs and Israelis alike in-
tend to keep the peace talks going despite the frustratingly slow
pace that has prompted frequent threats by one or another of the
participants to walk out.

In actuality, they said, the process is proceeding on two levels:
the public rhetoric by both sides for domestic political pur-
poses, and the more meaningful exchanges that take place among
negotiators in private.

That difference was underscored yesterday by the gap between
Djerejian's optimism and the downbeat note sounded in a joint
news conference by the four Arab delegations.

Haidar Abdel Shafi, the chief Palestinian negotiator, accused Is-
rael of obstructionism and said "there is no possibility of
peace" unless the United States takes a more active role and, in
effect, forces the parties to agree on a large-scale Israeli
withdrawal from Arab territories occupied in the 1967 Middle East
War.

Muwaffiq Allaf, the Syrian delegation head, added that only
minimal progress had been made toward getting an Israeli commit-
ment to withdraw from the Golan Heights, captured from Syria dur-
ing that war.

However, senior U.S. officials, speaking on condition they not be
identified, said these statements varied in important aspects
from what the Arab delegations privately have told the United
States.

The officials said that while the Arabs assume greater U.S. in-
tervention would work to their advantage, there has not been a
request for the United States "to go into the conference room,"
as one official put it. Under the terms of reference for the
talks agreed to last year, the United States cannot get involved
directly in the talks unless requested by both the Arabs and Is-
raelis.

In response to Arab complaints that no progress has been made,
one senior U.S. official said bluntly, "There has been progress."
He did not go into detail.

The Israelis and Palestinians have set up subgroups to start dis-
cussing the mechanics of electing a Palestinian self-governing
authority for the occupied territories and the power it would
have over land and water. When the talks resume, the official
said, these discussions probably will be extended to legal,
economic and human-rights questions.

In the negotiations with Syria, the Israelis came to the current
round last week offering to withdraw partially from the Golan in
return for Syrian recognition and strict security arrangements.
The official acknowledged that a large gap still exists between
the two sides, but he said both Syria and Israel are trying to
work out a statement of principles that would preserve their
basic positions while allowing them to proceed to substantive
negotiations.<02:24 10-30C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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