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Emergency talks in Paris fail to halt Mideast killing
©New York Times © St. Petersburg Times, published October 5, 2000 PARIS -- After more than 12 hours of stormy talks, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were still struggling early today to reach an agreement on how to stop the violence that has torn through Israel and the Palestinian territories. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that despite continuing "intense discussions" that began at 10 a.m. Wednesday, the United States was not "laying claim to any agreement." Albright summoned the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to Paris to try to dampen the violence that has resulted in the deaths of more than 60 Palestinians and threatens to unravel many of the gains made over the last seven years of Middle East peacemaking by the Clinton administration. Israeli officials were reported to have agreed to withdraw heavy armaments from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but that part of the overall accord that Albright was aiming for was not formalized by the parties, the New York Times reported. There were also reports that the Palestinians would agree to stay away from two flashpoints in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. According to accounts from diplomats involved in what turned into a chaotic flurry of talks that also involved the French president, Jacques Chirac, and the U.N. secretary general, Kofi Annan, the major sticking point was how an investigation should be conducted into the bloodletting and who would conduct it. Arafat stood by his insistence that an investigation should be international in character, and preferably involve the United Nations, while Barak was opposed to that, diplomats said. Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, who has been one of Arafat's key allies but also heads the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, said he planned to meet later today with Arafat, Barak and Albright. The violence continued in the Palestinian territories on Wednesday and spread beyond the borders of Israel and the Palestinian territories. In Mubarak's capital, Cairo, and in the Syrian capital, Damascus, thousands of university students protested the deaths of Palestinians. Where just last week she was playing peacemaker trying to finalize an overall accord between the Israelis and Palestinians, Albright found herself in Paris trying to extinguish the flames of the worst violence between the two sides since 1996. At one point on Wednesday evening, the talks became so heated that Arafat stormed out of a meeting at the residence of the American ambassador, saying, according to reporters who overheard the incident: "This is humiliation. I cannot accept it." Albright was heard in the same dialogue to order the security guards to "shut the gates," so that the Palestinian leader could not leave the compound in central Paris. According to the account of a Reuters correspondent, Albright ran after Arafat, urging him not to leave. The gates closed in front of Arafat's car, and he got out and returned to the meeting. The two leaders arrived in defiant moods. Arafat, whose people are at a boiling point over the visit last Thursday of the right-wing Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon, to the Muslim holy sites atop the Old City of Jerusalem, and over the killings since, was under pressure not to come at all. Barak, who was accompanied by the deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, Moshe Ya'alon, announced on arrival that he would have no part of an international investigation into the violence. During the meetings on Wednesday, Ya'alon forcefully defended the use of live ammunition by Israeli security forces, officials said. Earlier on Wednesday, Chirac met separately with the two leaders. The French president, who has been the most critical of any Western leader of Sharon's visit, said he strongly supported an international inquiry into the latest violence. But expressing Israeli opposition, the Israeli justice minister, Yossi Beilin, said, "I think that if there are questions and if there are queries, we can answer them ourselves. We don't need a committee biased against Israel to investigate things." For her part, Albright suggested that the Palestinians and the Israelis separately investigate what happened, and that American diplomats would help mediate the findings, thus lending an international character to the proceedings. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, bloody street clashes escalated as Palestinian gunmen opened fire with heavy machine guns for the first time. Israelis retaliated with attack helicopters and armor-piercing missiles. Seven Palestinians died, including a 13-year-old boy in central Gaza, bringing the toll in seven days of violence to 64 dead. Some Palestinians expected an intensification of fighting today, the Muslim Sabbath. They said Palestinians planned to go on the attack after Friday prayers. -- Information from the Chicago Tribune was used in this report.
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