Clinton returns to Camp David hoping to mediate Mideast differences

Clinton returns from the G8 summit Sunday to rejoin Middle East talks at Camp David

July 24, 2000
Web posted at: 12:32 a.m. EDT (0432 GMT)

In this story: 'This is not unlimited' Presidential strategy Formidable obstacles remain Pope weighs in Reaction to pope RELATED STORIES, SITES

CAMP DAVID, Maryland (CNN) -- U.S. President Bill Clinton returned to the Mideast peace talks in Camp David, Maryland, on Sunday evening and went straight into meetings with U.S. negotiators and separate sessions with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Clinton, who left the Group of Eight economic summit in Japan earlier than scheduled to return to the peace talks, was expected to determine whether the negotiations had moved forward and what could be done to hammer out a deal.

Clinton arrived by helicopter at the Camp David presidential retreat about 6:30 p.m. after a three-day absence to attend the G8 summit on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

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He left the White House for Camp David accompanied by his daughter, Chelsea. Asked by reporters about the prospects for an agreement, Clinton crossed his fingers and waved them, mouthing the words, "I've got my fingers crossed."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said during a Sunday evening news conference, "We expect meetings into the night."

Boucher added, "The president's back, we have been working very hard in his absence, and we look forward to his determination, his energy, and his seriousness in carrying the ball and moving forward from here."

'This is not unlimited'

Jerusalem still seemed to be the main sticking point in talks Sunday. But Boucher said the talks could not go on indefinitely.

"This is not unlimited," he said. "All the leaders have obligations, all the leaders have a desire to work hard for a peace agreement. So they will assess as they go forward how much time to devote to this and whether we're close enough to keep working."

Before leaving Japan, Clinton had sounded a note of cautious optimism, saying "headway" had been made in talks over the 52-year-old conflict. And in Israel on Sunday, Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin went further, telling reporters that Barak and Arafat were "on the verge" of an agreement.

Expectations that long-festering disagreements might be overcome on key issues -- borders, refugees and settlers as well as Jerusalem -- sparked demonstrations over the weekend. On Saturday, thousands of supporters of the Islamic group Hamas marched through the streets of Gaza City with banners telling Arafat to quit the Camp David talks.

Israeli peace activist Daniel Zeiderman, during an interview with CNN in Jerusalem, said, however, "In many ways, the negotiators ... are not being called upon to create a new reality in Jerusalem, but to recognize an existing one; to flesh it out and to formalize (it)."

The Palestinians have always regarded Jerusalem, or Al Quds, as they call it, as the capital of their future state. They want to restore a divide between Israeli and Arab sections, with the religious rights of all guaranteed.

Israel insists that Jerusalem is its "eternal" capital (although most countries maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv) and that the city will remain undivided under its control, with rights of religious access guaranteed to all.

Presidential strategy

Boucher, during a news conference earlier Sunday, said, "We are looking to get a good agreement -- one that can stand the test of time."

The talks have now lasted as long as the 1978 Camp David talks that led to the historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. But Boucher said there was no significance to a comparison.

"We're not running on a 22-year-old schedule," said Boucher. "We're running on whatever schedule we can make on the talks now." That schedule included a two-hour trip Sunday morning by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to the Civil War battleground at nearby Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Albright took Arafat to visit her Virginia farm on Saturday. The visits marked the first time either leader has left the bucolic Camp David retreat since the talks began.

"The main reason was to spend some time with them and to use the opportunity of an extended discussion to get out of Camp David and go see that there's a world out there," Boucher said. Albright has been hosting the discussions since Clinton's departure Thursday morning for Japan.

Boucher described the discussions in Clinton's absence as "fairly intense and focused ... on the issues involved in permanent status, on the core issues."

Formidable obstacles remain

Clinton left Okinawa a few hours earlier than scheduled. In keeping with the news blackout imposed on the Mideast summit, Clinton would not comment on the substance of the talks. He would only say that "nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to," and that the Israelis and the Palestinians have "not wasted their time."

Barak and Albright visit the Gettysburg National Military Park on Sunday

"They have really worked, and I am very grateful for that," said Clinton. "They have worked; that's all I can tell you. Whether we get an agreement or not, they have tried. They have really been up there working."

If a peace deal emerges from the Camp David summit, Barak and Arafat will need each other's help in the tough battle to sell it to their publics. Both sides have said they will hold a referendum on any agreement.

The trouble is that Israel's former top soldier and the veteran guerrilla chieftain don't trust each other, and their instincts, as well as outside pressures, pull them in opposite directions, aides and analysts say.

"Arafat has to help Barak sell this, and Barak has to help Arafat. But there's no sign that they are preparing to do so," said Jon B. Alterman, Middle East expert at the U.S. Institute for Peace. "There is no trust between the two leaders and the two communities."

Barak has worked methodically to prepare the Israelis for many of the compromises he is likely to have to make to reach an agreement, except on Jerusalem. David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former editor of The Jerusalem Post, said Barak had made clear he was prepared to give more than any previous Israeli leader, but that Arafat had done nothing to ease his own followers toward compromise. "The Palestinian public hasn't been prepared," he said.

Pope weighs in

As Clinton was flying home Sunday, Pope John Paul II weighed in on the peace talks and urged the creation of a special international status for the holy sites of Jerusalem. Only international oversight, he said, would safeguard all the ancient city's religions.

"The Holy See continues to maintain that only a special statute, internationally guaranteed, can effectively preserve the most sacred areas of the Holy City," John Paul said, speaking from the window of his summer villa outside Rome.

Less than a half square mile of Jerusalem's walled Old City holds some of the holiest sites of Islam, Judaism and Christianity: The Western Wall, remnant of ancient Israel's Second Temple; the Dome of the Rock, from which Islam says Mohammed sprang into heaven on a winged horse; and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Christianity says Jesus was crucified, entombed and resurrected.

International oversight would "assure freedom of religion and of worship for all the faithful who, in the region and the entire world, look to Jerusalem as a crossroads of peace and of coexistence," the pontiff said, lingering at his window in his weekly Sunday address to pilgrims to make his case.

Reaction to pope

Boucher refused to comment on the pope's statement about Jerusalem, and Israel's Foreign Ministry immediately dismissed it.

"It's not on the table," said Aviv Shiron, spokesman for Foreign Minister David Levy. "The reality has shown that since Israel has controlled the holy sites, freedom of access and worship has never been greater," Shiron said in Israel.

A Palestinian spokesman welcomed the pope's words, interpreting them as siding with the Palestinians in the challenge to Israel's insistence on sole stewardship.

"This is a sign from the pope, who is the highest Christian authority in this world, that he is denying the claim of Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem," said Hassan Abdel Rahman, the envoy of the Palestine Liberation Organization to Washington and a frequent spokesman for the Palestinians during the Camp David talks.

Israel and the Vatican have been at odds over Jerusalem since 1967, when Israel captured and subsequently annexed east Jerusalem -- which includes the Old City and its holy sites -- in the Mideast war.

CNN Jerusalem Bureau Chief Mike Hanna, CNN Correspondent Jerrold Kessel, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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