London peace talks may be in vain: US

Washington, April 25: The United States has little hope of a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks set for next month in London, a...

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Washington, April 25: The United States has little hope of a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks set for next month in London, a State Department official said on Friday.

“I think it’s very hard to be optimistic and hopeful,” spokesman James Rubin said. “We have no reason at this point to know that this meeting will yield anything but the kind of refusal to make hard decisions that we’ve seen in the past.”

US special envoy Dennis Ross and Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk were due in Israel on Saturday for a week of talks to promote a US peace package focusing on long overdue Israeli troop withdrawals from the West Bank.

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Their shuttle mission between Israeli and Palestinian leaders is designed to pave the way for separate talks in London on May 4 between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

According to press reports, Netanyahu is preparing to increase the scope of his troop withdrawal offerfrom nine per cent of the West Bank to 11 per cent.

Rubin said of the upcoming talks, “We hope that the leaders approach the meetings with an open mind and don’t miss the opportunity that London’s meetings will create to finally and irrevocably put the peace process back on track before it’s too late.”

He said Albright “is willing to go the extra mile to try to see what she can do to try to catalyze the Middle East peace process, but there is a limit to what the United States can do.”

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A senior official said the US Secretary of State “will continue as long as the parties are serious.”

The official added, “We are not making a judgement on whether this is a make-or-break meeting (but) the clock is ticking, there is not a lot of time left.”

Another US official said Arafat was now taking action against the Hamas terrorists `very much in the way that we have been urging him to do for some time. I think it needs to be recognized and acknowledged.”

Palestinian officials warned this week that ifIsrael did not implement the promised troop withdrawals and other steps required under interim peace agreements by May 1999 — the deadline set out in the Oslo accords — they would unilaterally proclaim the creation of a Palestinian state.