U.S. pushes 5-nation Arab summit about Barak
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, June 18, 1999
CAIRO -- Yemen has approved efforts apparently backed by the United States to convene an Arab summit to
form strategy in the wake of the election of Ehud Barak as Israel's new
prime minister.
A senior official made the assertion during a meeting on Thursday
with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. Yemeni Prime
Minister Abdul Karim Iryani handed a letter to Mubarak from President
Ali Abdullah Saleh that concerned bilateral and Arab relations.
In Paris, U.S. President Bill Clinton said the United States expects
Barak's government to resume negotiations on all tracks of Middle East
peace efforts. This would include talks with Syria, Lebanon and the
Palestinians.
"I believe when the new government takes office, if what we see and
the press reports is right about the composition of this broad-based
coalition government, I believe that there will be a vigorous pursuit of
all channels of the peace process,'' Clinton said.
The United States and France are urging Morocco's King
Hassan II to help convene the summit, according to a report Wednesday in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al Zaman. The report said U.S. President Bill Clinton and French President Jacques Chirac spoke separately to Hassan
and urged him to expand his role in Middle East peace efforts. They also
praised Hassan's as-yet-unannounced peace plan for the resumption of
negotiations.
A five nation summit -- Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and the
Palestinians -- was cancelled earlier this month after Syrian President
Hafez Al Assad refused to participate because of his strained relations
with Arafat.
The newspaper said Hassan began to prepare his plan in April and
discussed it with Clinton and Chirac. The plan calls for Israel to
implement the Wye River accords signed in October and which call for an
Israeli handover of 18.1 percent of the West Bank to full or Palestinian
control.
The Hassan plan also calls for the resumption of Israeli-Syrian
negotiations over the future of the Golan Heights at the point where the
talks were halted in 1996. Syria claims that Israel agreed in principle
to a full withdrawal from the Golan. Israel has denied this.
After Israel fulfills these conditions, the Arabs would begin to
normalize relations with the Jewish state, according to the Hassan plan.
At the same time, final status talks between Israel and the Palestinians
would begin.
On Wednesday, PA International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath was
quoted by the official Egyptian Middle East News Agency as saying that
Clinton will convene a summit in December with Barak and Palestinian
Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Arafat is said to be supportive of
Hassan's Middle East efforts.
Friday, June 18, 1999
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