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Subject: Rabin Criticizes Peace Talks;Israeli Leader Laments Procedure, Lack of
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 92 09:14:31 EST
Message-ID: <48.1992Nov1.091431@AmeriCast.com>

Rabin Criticizes Peace Talks;Israeli Leader Laments Procedure,
Lack of Progress<By David Hoffman=Washington Post Foreign Ser-
vice=

JERUSALEM, Oct.  31 - On the first anniversary of the peace talks
between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Prime Minister Yitzhak Ra-
bin today criticized the basic approach set at the opening
conference in Madrid, saying it had not produced results.  "I
would not choose the Madrid framework as the ideal framework for
achieving peace," Rabin said in an interview with Israel Radio,
referring to the plan in which Israel is negotiating simultane-
ously with its Arab neighbors and a Palestinian delegation.

Rabin said Israel would prefer to have talks with one country at
a time. "From 1949 to 1979 we reached limited or comprehensive
agreements like the peace treaty with Egypt only when we sat with
one Arab partner at a time," he said. "Until today, multi-sided
bilateral talks simultaneously in the same place have not suc-
ceeded. No agreement has come out of this."

Rabin stopped short of calling for a change in the procedure, but
his remarks today reflected deepening frustration here with the
year-old peace process. He has generally been supportive of the
negotiations that he inherited from the right-wing Likud govern-
ment of prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, while promising to move
faster toward an agreement on Palestinian self-rule.

The talks with the Palestinians, however, have made less headway
than Rabin had hoped, and his deadline of a tentative agreement
in December that would allow elections in the spring seems to be
slipping.

At the same time, Rabin has been frustrated at the rivalries that
have emerged in recent negotiations between the Arab partici-
pants, principally Syria and the Palestinian delegation. Rabin
warned that Israel would not allow one delegation to link pro-
gress in its talks with those of another Arab participant, as
some have recently tried to do.

In particular, tensions have been revived between the mainstream
Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by
Yasser Arafat, which supports the talks, and a group of rejec-
tionists who seek to disrupt the talks. The rejectionists are
made up of some Palestinian factions based in Damascus, and Ha-
mas, the Islamic movement based in the Israeli-occupied terri-
tories.

Meanwhile, Israel resumed shelling targets in southern Lebanon
today, according to Reuter.  Israeli gunners fired dozens of
shells into villages south of Beirut where Hezbollah guerrillas
are active. It was the first shelling since a two-day battle ear-
ly last week.<02:46 11-01C9999-----

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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