Military

DATE=11/09/00

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=MIDEAST / PEACE (L-O)

NUMBER=2-269035

BYLINE=ROSS DUNN

DATELINE=JERUSALEM

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is pushing for fundamental changes in the Middle East peace negotiations. Mr. Arafat, who is to meet (has met) with President Bill Clinton in Washington, wants the European Union and the United Nations to permanently join the mediating process. But as Ross Dunn reports from Jerusalem, prominent Israeli experts are against the move.

TEXT: Yasser Arafat believes the Palestinians can never return to the same style of negotiating peace with Israel.

Since 1993, Israel and the Palestinians have engaged in direct negotiations under the supervision of the United States.

But after weeks of deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, Mr. Arafat says his people have lost faith that American mediation alone will lead to their goal of an independent state.

One of his top advisors, Mr. Sulaiman Najjab, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee, told V-O-A the rules must change.

/// ACT NAJJAB ///

The American supervision of the process has failed and since we need really some kind of other participants to take part and to take responsibility for applying 2-4-2 (U-N) resolutions, safeguarding the international legality and to guarantee the application of what we agreed upon with the Israeli side.

/// ACT ENDS ///

Mr. Najjab says that a precedent for wider international involvement was set in October during the Middle East crisis summit at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.

/// ACT NAJJAB ///

I think that at Sharm El-Sheikh we took a small step forward in this direction, besides President Clinton, there were representatives of Europe, the United Nations Secretary General and other Arab countries. We need Russia to go back (to the mediation effort). We need this framework, supervision, to be widened, and if we want really not to go back and make the same mistakes and to the same problem and then back again to the same outburst of bloodshed.

/// ACT ENDS ///

But Israeli experts doubt whether an expanded mediation effort will improve the process.

Among them is the President of Tel Aviv University, Professor Itamar Rabinovich, who lead Israel's negotiations with Syria during the 1990's.

Mr. Rabinovich was also present as an observer at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit and he told V-O-A that adding more participants to the process did not prove successful.

/// ACT RABINOVICH ///

When Yasser Arafat speaks about internationalizing the process, he means to diminish the United States role and bring in the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and other actors who would make it more comfortable for him. It does not work. What went on at Sharm el-Sheikh, at some point reminded us of a definition of a camel, it is a horse designed by a committee. You had around the table, people of good will, Kofi Annan, everybody putting papers, trying to come up with an accepted text. At some point, this forum dispersed and President Clinton went to work and dealt directly with Barak and Arafat and there was a text.

/// ACT ENDS ///

Professor Rabinovich said the Europe Union is made of countries with different - sometimes opposing - views and this made its proposed involvement in the Middle East peace talks very problematic.

/// ACT RABINOVICH ///

So in that regard there is no substitute for the U-S role, the U-S also behaves with, what I call - imperial responsibility. It recognizes that it is the one superpower, that it needs to act accordingly and not every European power state behaves in the same fashion, which makes it a dubious proposition from an Israeli point of view and hence a major difference in perspective or outlook between us and Arafat. We definitely want the United States to continue playing a leading role.

/// ACT ENDS ///

Professor Rabinovich says whoever is the winner in the U-S Presidential election will make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a top priority of the new administration.

He says events in the Middle East have an impact on such key issues as the price of oil and international stability.

This, he says, makes it imperative for any U-S President to focus his efforts on helping to bring peace to the region. (SIGNED)

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