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Israeli and Palestinian Negotiators Prepare for Summit

Aired July 10, 2000 - 6:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BERNARD SHAW, CNN ANCHOR: Twenty-two years ago, Israel and Egypt reached a historic peace accord at Camp David. U.S. President Bill Clinton says the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have the experience, the ability and sheer guts to do the same.

Delegations are now in Washington. They meet in less than 24 hours at the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.

CNN's longtime Jerusalem correspondent, Jerrold Kessel, is covering the talks -- Jerrold.

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bernie, the stakes are certainly high here. That much is clear, but precious little else is.

Perhaps you can say the only thing that is clear is just how inauspicious are the circumstance going into such a crucial -- crucial summit, a summit that's been declared make-or-break. And that seems to be very much the mood, the mindset of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak going into the summit.

He seems to have convinced President Clinton of the dangers of inertia, that inertia, not engaging the crucial issues at this level, could perhaps ruin the whole peace process. And Mr. Barak is going into the talks with that mood and trying to say this is the time to take the tough decisions.

He is confronting the Palestinians who for their part are puzzled at best, and perhaps even more than that, they're worried, at least worried, because even though the Israelis say they put a package proposal on the table, the Palestinians say the gaps remain absolutely enormous. The chasm, they say, is oceans wide between them. And therefore, they're puzzled about why to call the summit. They're also worried that perhaps they will be under pressure to make -- take the kind of decisions that they say the two sides are not ready to take at this stage.

What Palestinian chief negotiator Saed Erekat, to whom we spoke a short while ago, called it somewhere between high hopes and low expectations, and Mahmud Abass -- Abu Mazzan (ph), Mr. Arafat's No. 2 man, said that when we said that Mr. Barak -- we asked him, Mr. Barak had said 50-50 chance of something positive coming out of it. He said, say 42 percent, say 42 1/2, say 43.

Now he wasn't being facetious because the Palestinians really want to say the chances are much less than 50 percent of something positive coming out of this. We don't even know how long it will continue, a week or two. That's the problem, the Palestinians worry. The Israelis optimistic, but really fear, the fear of losing, the fear of not succeeding. That may be the best factor in perhaps providing some spur, a positive spur toward a success against all the odds. And then of course we don't know how much of the American pressure there will be, how much the United States really wants success out of this summit.

SHAW: Well, however long they go, we'll be hear to cover it, and we're glad that you're on this side of the ocean to help us cover the story.

Jerrold Kessel, thank you -- Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: That's right. And just before Prime Minister Barak left Israel, he managed to fight off his latest and most serious political challenge.

CNN's Jerusalem bureau chief Mike Hanna has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE HANNA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Ehud Barak survived a vote of no confidence in Israel's Knesset, or parliament, but only just: 54 members of the 120-seat body voted in favor of the motion, but this was seven less than the 61 needed to pass the vote of no confidence and force new elections.

But only 52 members of the parliament supported Mr. Barak, which effectively means that his government no longer enjoys majority within the parliament.

The motion has been brought by the opposition Likud party, which argued that Mr. Barak had made unacceptable concessions in his negotiations with the Palestinians, and which had called on him to abandon this summit in the United States and to suspend all negotiations and call new elections.

However, Mr. Barak now may have suffered a political defeat in the parliament, but certainly he's now on his way to Washington. And in his view at least, the very fact that he's able to get on the plane represents a major victory.

Mike Hanna, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Well, earlier in the day, Mr. Barak sought to reassure one of the Middle East's leading players. Here is CNN's Cairo bureau chief Ben Wedeman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just hours before heading to Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak makes one last attempt to reach out to the Arab world, meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.

U.S., Palestinian and Israeli leaders are trying to keep a lid on expectations of a breakthrough at Camp David. They needn't have bothered. Expectations are already very low.

MOHAMED SID AHMED, ANALYST: This summit is the admission that we cannot call the stage we've reach a final stage, that we have to accept things (UNINTELLIGIBLE) indefinitely into the future, and that this meeting is rather in the aim of avoiding the worst.

WEDEMAN: Since that sunny day in the White House Rose Garden nearly seven years ago, the Middle East process has careened from crisis to crisis. Progress has been excruciatingly slow, interspersed with outbursts of violence, the entire process kept alive by the sort of high-profile summitry set to begin at Camp David on Tuesday.

Arab observers say leaders at Camp David, especially Prime Minister Barak, should bring their negotiating positions back down to Earth.

RIFAAT SAID, "AL-HALI" NEWSPAPER: He is asking for what is impossible. Again if Mr. Barak cannot reach a solution, comprehensive solution, so let us reach a half solution, quasi-solution.

(on camera): As much as many people here doubt the Camp David summit will succeed, at the same time they don't expect it to be a complete failure, because, they say, the consequences of failure are simply too costly to contemplate.

WEDEMAN: Ben Wedeman, CNN, Cairo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHAW: The Clinton administration, preparing to host this summit, is characterizing its approach as optimistic but realistic. Our CNN State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel has more on the issues involved.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Narrowly escaping his government's collapse, Prime Minister Barak left behind the unstable political climate in Israel and headed toward an even less predictable summit at Camp David, a summit the Clinton administration believes can still succeed despite Barak's problems back home.

CLINTON: A solid majority of the people want him to come and want him to pursue peace. Look, if this were easy, it would have been a long time ago.

KOPPEL: In fact, some members of the Palestinian delegation to the summit say Barak's shaky coalition could work to their advantage.

HANAN ASHRAWI, PALESTINIAN SPOKESWOMAN: In some ways the falling apart of the coalition is a logical conclusion because of the nature of this coalition, which was inherently anti-peace. KOPPEL: But in order to forge a final peace deal, Barak and Arafat must reach agreement on remaining issues at the very core of their longstanding conflict. They include refugees. The Palestinians want Israel to grant hundreds of thousands of Palestinians the right to return to their homeland and compensate those who can't.

Borders: The Palestinians want Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza to the 1967 borders.

And Jerusalem: The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

In return, Barak needs assurances any agreement will put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. The challenge for President Clinton: to find a formula acceptable to both Arafat and Barak.

DAVID MAKOVAKY, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: Clinton is going to basically have to shuttle between these two leaders, because each side may prefer to make a concession to the U.S. that they wouldn't make to each other.

KOPPEL (on camera): Even so, administration officials are quick to caution unless the leaders themselves arrive ready to dial, there is no guarantee this summit will succeed.

Andrea Koppel, CNN, the State Department.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: For more on President Clinton's role in the peace negotiations, we are joined by senior White House correspondent John King -- John.

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, this perhaps the toughest international policy challenge of the Clinton presidency, something he has focused on for seven years. His constant focus reward so far mostly with a constant sense of frustration.

This is a president, however, renowned for his personal charm and his powers of persuasion. For example, in the budget battles back here in the United States, the president always seems to get the upper hand even though the opposing party has run the United States Congress these past five years.

Up at Camp David, the president will meet first with the leaders together, and then over the course of the next week, aides envision him going back and forth to Prime Minister Barak and Mr. Arafat, and among the delegations trying to broker the differences, coming up with American proposals if he believes that is necessary.

Speaking to reporters earlier today, the president said he would do whatever he believe is necessary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CLINTON: I think both sides have a pretty clear idea of what the various options are. And I don't want to set an artificial deadline for these talks. But I think that they need to listen to each other and I need to listen and we need to get right after it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now many would argue Mr. Clinton is a bit of a liability because he has just six months left in office. U.S. officials say he will try to turn that to his advantage by making the case that all three leaders -- himself, Mr. Barak and Mr. Arafat -- all have domestic political concerns, that the clock is ticking, but that these three leaders know each other very well, they know the issues very wells, and that this is the time to make peace, because if this summit, Mr. Clinton will say, we're told, it could be another year or more before the next U.S. president can turn his attention in such detail to these very difficult issues -- Bernie, Judy.

WOODRUFF: John King, thanks.

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