Peace talks come back from dead

WASHINGTON - Middle East peace talks were brought back from the dead yesterday, after all efforts to revive them seemed to have failed.

"The gaps remain substantial, but there has been progress and we must all be prepared to go the extra mile," said United States President Bill Clinton, who has been guiding the negotiations, after a dramatic 11th-hour decision by Israelis and Palestinians that talks would carry on once the President left for a summit in Japan.

"We will continue to try to close the gaps," he said. "We all thought it was over ... but we discovered that nobody wanted to give up."

A last-ditch effort to salvage the Camp David talks had collapsed yesterday afternoon (NZT), leaving American attempts at mediation apparently stranded and the region in danger of a new conflagration. Luggage had been loaded and staff were preparing to withdraw from the presidential retreat in the mountains of Maryland. Then the talks resumed, the US asked both sides to continue their discussions and they agreed.

After a tumultuous day of reverses, name-calling and blame games, the effort to strike a deal at Camp David on a new Palestinian state had seemed to have disintegrated. From the beginning of the day, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had threatened to walk out on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Clinton tried until the last to persuade the Israelis and Palestinians to agree, but they were so far apart at the end of nine days of talks that it seemed they could not manage even a face-saving gesture, a statement to continue, or re-engage. The failure of the talks risked leaving Clinton's efforts at peacemaking looking futile. He had delayed his departure for a summit of leaders of the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations in Japan in the hope that a deal might be salvaged, or that at least total failure might be avoided.

"After a round of intensive consultations this evening, the parties have agreed to stay at Camp David while I travel to Okinawa," he said.

A White House statement said the summit had ended without reaching an agreement after a long day when it had maintained a degree of optimism until the last.

But at the last moment, Barak and Arafat agreed to stay and resume talks while Clinton was away, under the leadership of Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State.

The talks are intended to set a date for Palestinian statehood, as well as its borders, the return of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem, which Israel occupied illegally in its 1967 war and which Palestinians want to reoccupy. And it was Jerusalem that remained the key sticking point.

Barak had said earlier in the day that he wanted to withdraw, citing bad faith on the part of the Palestinians.

"The Palestinians arrived at Camp David lacking a true commitment, and are not ready to have a substantive discussion about a lasting peace and to make historic decisions," Israel radio quoted him as saying in a letter to Clinton.



The Palestinians were equally vitriolic. "This peace does not deal with balance of forces but balance of interests," said Hassan Abdel Rahman, who heads the Palestine Liberation Organisation's office in Washington.

He said Barak "was negotiating with the Israeli right-wing and not with the Palestinian delegation."

Clinton is personally committed to a Middle East peace deal, and has staked his legacy on an agreement.

The Palestinians have said that they will made a declaration of statehood on September 13 with or without Israeli agreement, a declaration which risks pitching the region back into open conflict.

Arafat and Barak are both under heavy pressure from hardliners in their camps to reject agreement.

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