Charge by Netanyahu's spokesman stings State Department's Rubin

WASHINGTON -- The State Department has taken a parting shot at the Israeli official viewed as the most inimical to Washington's interests in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

State Department spokesman James Rubin cut off a reporter at the State Department briefing on Thursday as he tried to complete a question regarding accusations by David Bar-Illan, director of policy planning for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Bar-Illan accused the Clinton administration of supporting Ehud Barak in the recent Israeli elections.

"Is he still the spokesman there?" Rubin asked. "Is he still employed? I just don't know whether I'm commenting on the views of a private citizen or not."

In the June 14 edition in the National Review, Bar-Illan accused the White House of engineering the defeat of Netanyahu. Bar-Illan wrote that Clinton consulted regularly with Barak's U.S. campaign strategists and encouraged Americans to donate to the election campaign.

"The administration preferred 'active measures' to discredit Netanyahu," he wrote. "In the four months preceding the election, hardly a day passed without a Washington story about Netanyahu's failure to keep his word: on the Wye agreement, settlements, building in Jerusalem, and even on Israel-Russia relations."

Rubin did not dispute Bar-Illan's assertions. Instead, the spokesman accused Netanyahu of harming the Wye River agreement signed in October, an accord on which he worked closely with Bar-Illan.

"There are some positions that the Netanyahu government took that we thought were in furtherance of the peace process and some that we thought harmed the peace process," he said. "We always said so before the election, during the election and after the election. We didn't take different positions because of the election, and we wish Mr. David Bar Illan well in his future endeavors."

Pressed again to answer the question, Rubin replied, "No, I believe the bulk of it was about us interfering with the Israeli elections. So I thought that was most of what I needed to answer."

U.S. officials accused Bar-Illan of leaking or announcing sensitive and inaccurate information regarding Palestinian compliance of the Wye River accords. They said Bar-Illan issued inaccurate announcements that the Palestinian Authority had released Hamas detainees accused of being involved in the killing of Americans.

Some officials acknowledged they resented Netanyahu's and Bar-Illan's warm relationship with the Republican leadership in Congress. They said Bar-Illan regularly briefed and advised House and Senate leaders on how to block U.S. efforts to press Israel to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process.