Dead-end London?

By Graham Usher, Dina Ezzat and Nevine Khalil

A government statement said President Hosni Mubarak urged Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to "deal positively" with the American initiative "which represents the minimum required for reviving the peace process." The statement was issued following Tuesday's breakfast meeting between Mubarak and Netanyahu during the latter's brief visit to Cairo.

The statement said Mubarak affirmed that the "only way for making progress and reviving the peace process is the thorough implementation, with good will, of all agreements signed by the Palestinian and Israeli sides, particularly a larger and credible Israeli military redeployment."

But Netanyahu, following his return to Jerusalem, displayed even greater intransigence and declared he would face international condemnation rather than jeopardise Israel's security.

The United States wants Israel to withdraw from 13.1 per cent of West Bank land in a further handover of territory under interim peace deals with the Palestinians. Israel, citing security concerns, is insisting on nine per cent.

"It cannot be that Israel is the only side to make compromises," Netanyahu said. "Both sides, Israel and the Palestinians, must make concessions. If I don't capitulate to [their] demands, will I be branded an obstacle to peace? Of course [I will]. So what?"

Ross visited Israel and Indyk visited Israel and Egypt ostensibly to lay the groundwork for US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's separate meetings in London next Monday with Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

But analysts are convinced that these meetings will be dead before they are born unless the Americans can convince Netanyahu to accept their initiative.

Arafat, who is expected to visit Cairo on Saturday for consultations with Mubarak ahead of the London meetings, said publicly for the first time yesterday that he had accepted the American proposal and would not accept anything less.

"Under the agreement, the first two phases of redeployment were supposed to be from 40 per cent of the West Bank. Then, it was lowered to 30 per cent, then to 13 per cent," Arafat said at a news conference in Gaza with Foreign Minister Amr Moussa.

"We have accepted this, working from a positive position. We don't want to leave any chance for Netanyahu to escape implementation," he said.

Most analysts are aware that the bartering over percentages is shadow-play. The Palestinians have accepted the American proposal on the condition that there will be a third redeployment "not later than mid-1998," as guaranteed by then US Secretary of State Warren Christopher in the 1997 Hebron agreement.

"The carrying out of the third redeployment is the central feature of the signed agreements," Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qrei told the Israeli newspaper Maariv on Tuesday. "And anyone who intends to overturn it should know he is violating the agreements.

It is a violation the Israeli government desperately wants the US to approve. Last week Israel's National Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon announced that Israel should only implement a second redeployment if the US provides a "written guarantee" that the third will be scrapped. More subtly, Netanyahu has intimated that a "more generous" second redeployment could be forthcoming if the US presses Arafat to accept his vision that the third redeployment be "collapsed" into the final status negotiations. The US, at the moment, appears unwilling to exert this pressure.

Maariv speculated yesterday that the US might call off the London meetings if Ross failed to narrow the gap between the Palestinian and Israeli positions. But David Bar-Illan, Netanyahu's senior adviser, said that he had not heard that the London meetings were in jeopardy.

Egyptian diplomats are convinced that the London talks are doomed to failure unless the US manages to persuade Netanyahu to accept its initiative. "I have no evidence to conclude that the London talks will deliver. Rather, the opposite," said a senior Egyptian diplomat.

According to Foreign Minister Moussa, the "Palestinians have given a positive reply to the US ideas, and nobody could suggest to them to accept less than that, but the peace process will not move forward unless the Israeli side also provides a positive reply."

Informed sources said that while Mubarak, at Tuesday's meeting, sincerely tried to impress on Netanyahu the necessity of moving ahead, the Israeli Prime Minister was busy trying to sell Egypt his plan for conditional withdrawal from southern Lebanon -- a plan already rejected by Lebanon and Syria.

"It should be made clear that Egypt will not support any proposal that aims to break the unified stance of Lebanon and Syria, willingly adopted by both countries," Moussa said.

Egyptian officials are coming to the conclusion that Netanyahu is not genuinely concerned with peace-making. "He appears to be negotiating for negotiations' sake," a source said.

According to informed sources Arafat, in making preparations for the London talks, has brokered a deal with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was on a visit to the Gulf, that Hamas would halt all "activities" against Israel, to give the meeting a full chance. But, warned one source, it is not possible for Arafat to go on excluding Hamas for long.