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Middle East Peace Summit Ends Without an Agreement

Aired July 25, 2000 - 6:10 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: After 15 days of grueling negotiations, the Middle East peace summit at Camp David, Maryland has ended without an agreement.

CNN's Andrea Koppel reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Exhausted, disappointed, but unwilling to concede defeat, President Clinton declared the summit over.

WILLIAM J. CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Significant progress was made on some of the core issues: that Jerusalem, as you all knew it would be, remains the biggest problem for the reasons you know.

KOPPEL: Even before the official motorcades began rolling out of Camp David, the finger-pointing had begun. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, early Tuesday morning in a note to President Clinton saying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's position on Jerusalem made further negotiations pointless.

HASSAN ABDEL RAHMAN, PALESTINIAN REPRESENTATIVE: Mr. Barak wanted to have Israeli-Jewish sovereignty over Haram as-Sharif and over other places in Jerusalem, which is unacceptable: neither to the Palestinians nor to the Arabs.

KOPPEL: But Prime Minister Barak said Israel had already made generous concessions regarding Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem while it was Yasser Arafat who refused to compromise.

EHUD BARAK, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: I emphasize that it takes two to tango. We cannot impose it upon them. We are ready, and if a partner will be, too, there will be peace.

KOPPEL: In a statement released when the summit ended, all three parties noted the negotiations had been "unprecedented in both scope and details," and pledged to "continue their efforts to conclude an agreement" on all the core issues as soon as possible.

SAEB ERAKAT, CHIEF PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATOR: The prospect for an agreement on all pyramid status issues after the Camp David summit are stronger than any time before in the last almost nine years of negotiations.

KOPPEL: But a senior U.S. official indicated the U.S. would not be willing to host another peace summit unless there was a change in the as yet unwavering Palestinian position on Jerusalem.

CLINTON: Maybe because they had been preparing for it longer, maybe because they had thought through it more that the prime minister moved forward more from his initial position than Chairman Arafat on -- particularly surrounding the questions of Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: A senior U.S. official tells CNN that President Clinton's public praise of Barak and more restrained remarks about Arafat were deliberate, intended to give Barak a boost back home, while at the same time, Bernie, giving Mr. Arafat a nudge toward a compromise -- Bernie.

SHAW: Andrea, on those core issues, what next?

KOPPEL: Well, as you've heard, Jerusalem is the sticking point: President Clinton has sent both the Israelis and the Palestinians back to the region to contemplate things for the next several weeks in the hopes of hopefully getting both of them back to another summit, but only if Mr. Arafat makes more of a compromise on Jerusalem, Bernie.

SHAW: OK, thank you, Andrea Koppel.

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