Legacy countdown: Ross will try to jumpstart peace talks

RAMALLAH -- Envoy Dennis Ross has begun an aggressive U.S. effort to accelerate the pace of final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as the clock ticks down on the Clinton administration.

Ross attended a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Eilat and said both sides genuinely want to complete a framework agreement before a June deadline. Israeli and Palestinian officials were less enthusiastic.

"We are in a new phase," Ross said on Wednesday according to Middle East Newsline. "It's a more intensive phase. It is a phase in which they are working here and I also will be leaving here to go and talk to the leaders. I will go back and forth between the leaders and the negotiators. I expect that over the next several days while I am in the area I will work with them here, I will travel to see the leaders and I will come back. I think that the next 6-8 weeks could be potentially very decisive."

Ross plans to leave Israel on Thursday when the current round of negotiations end. They will resume next week in an unspecified location, but probably in the Egyptian resort of Taba.

The U.S. envoy said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will arrive in the region and meet with both Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. At that point, Ms. Albright will determine whether the time is ripe for a summit with President Bill Clinton.

The PA appears to have mixed feelings over the level of U.S. involvement in the talks. PA sources said Arafat has been resisting Clinton's appeals for new ideas to bridge the gap between Israeli and Palestinian positions for a final status settlement.

Instead, the PA wants the U.S. role to facilitate a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem. The PA asserts that a full withdrawal fulfills United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.

"The American role, as much as the European role, must be confined to finding mechanism to implement these resolutions," Palestinian minister and senior negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

PA Information Minister Yasser Abbed Rabbo said the U.S. role has not changed. "The American role is to help with steps meant to advance the process or prevent any halt," Abbed Rabbo said. "This, for example, includes settlements."

Abbed Rabbo dismissed Israeli reports of progress in the talks. "There is no basis for optimism," he said.