Rabin Says Talks Will Be Delayed by U.S. Election

JERUSALEM —  Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday that the U.S. presidential election will put the Middle East peace talks on hold, possibly for several months, until the uncertainty that the campaign brings is ended.

Although Israel had offered to resume the Washington-based negotiations, which are scheduled to adjourn this week, in October, neither its Arab partners nor the Bush Administration would agree, Rabin told the Cabinet.

“The Bush Administration is totally preoccupied with the elections--that is, with its own fate--and the Arabs want to see whether this Administration does, in fact, survive November,” a senior Israeli official commented after the weekly Cabinet meeting.

“We ourselves are willing to go on, for these talks are still quite exploratory, and we do not need U.S. mediation for that. But, with Washington’s attention elsewhere, the energy is not there for real progress.”

Rabin nonetheless accused Syria of provoking a “mini-crisis” in the talks last week, cutting short Thursday’s session and declaring the negotiations at a near-impasse, in what Israel saw as an attempt to bring in the United States to extract early concessions from Israel and thus “save” the peace effort prior to the U.S. elections.

Ministers emerging from the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday supported Rabin’s determination to press Syria hard on the character of the peace treaty that the two countries would have before negotiating the return to Damascus of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Israel had hoped to continue this discussion in October, offering to send its delegation back to Washington and thus maintain the talks’ momentum. Israel is negotiating simultaneously with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians.

“We have to negotiate within the framework of American politics, such is the Middle East,” Faisal Husseini, head of the Palestinian negotiating team, said in a weekend interview here. “We would like to go faster, but we are caught within the timetable of the U.S. presidential elections.”

However, the shift of James A. Baker III from secretary of state back to the White House as chief of staff last month is seen by Western diplomats who follow the talks as slowing the negotiations even more than the election itself.

In the hope of maintaining the dialogue through the election and the possible change in administrations, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres sought earlier this month to open another channel, this through France and--more broadly--Europe.

Visiting Paris, Peres suggested to Roland Dumas, the French foreign minister, that he use his influence to draw Syria into the multilateral talks on Middle East issues that are running parallel to the Arab-Israeli negotiations in Washington. Dumas quickly made a trip to Damascus last week to see Syrian President Hafez Assad and said later in a radio interview that France was trying to serve as an intermediary.

Rabin, tartly reminded by the United States that it was the sponsor of the talks, halted the Peres effort.

The Israelis hope to fix a date for the next round of talks before the negotiations break on Thursday in advance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, but officials said that the U.S. mediators have said that even this depends on the elections.

“We might still get agreement for another round next month,” another official said. “But the Arabs and the U.S. are not at all enthusiastic. . . . The question of when to meet again is on the agenda for this week.”

Implicit in that question, however, is a larger one: What will happen to the talks if Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton defeats President Bush on Nov. 3?

“U.S. policy in the Middle East is not that of George Bush, but of the United States,” Husseini commented. “If there were a change in administrations in Washington, there won’t be a change in policies.

“But the momentum may be different. Just the change in presidents would bring that. There would be a hiatus, a period of waiting while the new Administration got its bearings.”

Both the Israelis and the Arabs are watching the U.S. election campaign closely, each calculating its possible gains and losses day by day.

Neither side accepts past conventional wisdom that a Democratic victory would favor Israel and a Republican one the Arabs. But on both sides, some observers see Bush as more prepared than Clinton to intervene in the negotiations, pushing harder for the compromises that will be necessary for a settlement.

“For sure, we prefer to deal with people we know,” Husseini said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re afraid to deal with new people.”

Another Palestinian leader, however, chafed a bit at the election’s impact on negotiations he hopes will lead first to autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza Strip and then to a Palestinian state.

“It’s odd to think that the unemployment rate in California could determine the future of the West Bank,” Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, chairman of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, said, reflecting on California’s importance in the presidential race. “But that’s part of the equation.”