Arafat Hopeful Despite Arab Rejection of Key Issue

Jan. 4, 2001 -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said today he hoped to reach a final peace agreement with Israel before President Clinton leaves office on Jan. 20.

“We hope so. We hope for that, according to the promise by President Clinton, to make every possible effort before the period ends,” Arafat told reporters today. He declined, however, to answerdirectly a question about his final word on Clinton’s proposals.

Arafat’s assurances came after his return from Cairo, where he was sounding out Arab foreign ministers about a U.S. peace proposal for the Middle East.

Arab foreign ministers had earlier dug in their heels at the Cairo meeting, urging Arafat not to give in to a key concession under the latest U.S. peace proposal.

Insisting that Palestinian refugees’ right of return is “sacred,” Arab leaders have left Arafat with little wiggle room to negotiate within Clinton’s proposals.

“I would like to point out that Lebanon has totally rejected the idea of resettling the Palestinian refugees [permanently] and insisted on the right of the Palestinians to return. We believe that this is a sacred right,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, speaking as the chairman of today’s meeting, told reporters after the talks.

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Jake Siewert said Arafat had accepted the proposals — with some reservations — during talks with Clinton in Washington on Tuesday.

Arafat’s new moves for peace, however modest, came as senior Israeli envoy Gilead Sher makes his way to Washington to quiz American mediators on Arafat’s conditional acceptance of the U.S. deal.

The White House said Arafat had given conditional approvalto U.S. proposals for a peace deal, but Palestinian officialssaid one of the conditions he had set was that refugees musthave the right to return to their homes.

Arabs Unite Against Plan

Speaking to reporters after a closed session of talks in Cairo today, Moussa said Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud had voiced his country’s rejection of any deal that called for settling Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, home to about 360,000 Palestinians displaced in the 1948 and 1967 Middle East wars.

The U.S. plan allows for refugees to return to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but not to Israel, where Israelis fear an influx would destabilize the country by upsetting the balance between Jews and Arabs.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa, whose state mediarepeatedly denounced the U.S. proposals in recent days, reportedlyopened today’s Arab League meeting by saying the plan should noteven be discussed.

Al-Sharaa instead called on the Arab League to concentrate on supporting the Palestinian uprising.

Arabs ranging from moderate to radical in their stance toward Israel have rejected the U.S. formula. The Palestinian Hamas movement said today that with his formula, Clinton had virtually adopted “Zionist proposals, conditions and visions.”

Different Expectations

While Sher is expected to meet with American mediators Dennis Ross and Aaron Miller in Washington, aides from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s office today said Sher’s job was not to talk about the peace process, but about security and how to stop the violence.

More than three months of violence between Palestinians and Israelis has claimed more than 250 lives, mostly Palestinians.

Speaking to reporters in Tel Aviv today, Israel’s deputy defense minister called on Arafat to curb the violence before peace talks could resume. “There is one litmus test for the sincerity of Arafat — if in the next 24 hours he gives a clear order to stop shooting and to stop putting booby traps along the roads,” said Ephraim Sneh. “This is the real test, not words.”

Sneh’s comments contradict U.S. expectations for Sher’s visit. “It would startle me if they didn’t talk about it,” said a senior administration official said today, referring to Clinton’s peace proposal . “I expect him to review the parameters (of Clinton’s peace proposals), and Israeli and Palestinian reservations about themas well as focus on the violence in the region and finding away to halt it.”

ABCNEWS’ Deborah Amos in Jerusalem and Linda Albin in London and Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.