Arafat Promises Albright a Steady Anti-Terror Effort

JERUSALEM â€”  Yasser Arafat assured Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Thursday that his Palestinian Authority is ready to mount a steady and sustained effort to prevent terrorists from using the West Bank and Gaza Strip as staging grounds for deadly attacks on Israel.

Albright and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom the secretary of State is also pushing hard in a bid to revive the moribund peace process, said they will wait to see if Arafat keeps his latest promise. But a senior U.S. official said later that, if the Palestinian Authority president follows through, it should be enough to rekindle hopes for peace.

“She [Albright] came away believing that he had made a commitment . . . that we would regard as sufficient,� the official said. He added that the United States will evaluate Arafat’s actions over the next few months.

Albright’s seeming success in talks with Arafat contrasted sharply with her inability to obtain any sort of concession from Netanyahu. In talks Wednesday, the Israeli leader rejected Albright’s call for a return of confiscated Palestinian tax collections and an easing of the West Bank and Gaza Strip closures that have shredded the Palestinian economy.

But a few hours after her talks with Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Albright stepped up the pressure on Israel, going far beyond Wednesday’s modest request.

She called for Israel to declare a “timeout� on expansion of settlements, demolition of houses, confiscation of land and seizure of the identity cards of Palestinians. It was the Clinton administration’s most extensive call yet for Israel to change policies that the Arab world regards as provocative.

In a speech to high school students at the Israel Academy of Arts and Science, Albright said bluntly that Israel and the Palestinians share the blame for the crisis of confidence that has stalled peace negotiations and reversed much of the progress in Israeli-Palestinian relations recorded since 1993, when Arafat and the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a peace accord on the White House lawn.

“This crisis was neither inevitable nor accidental,� she said. “It has been caused by the failure of both sides to live up to their full obligations as partners in peace. As I have said several times in recent days, this failure was not symmetrical, but it was mutual. And mutual actions will be required if mutual confidence is to be restored.�

She called on Israel to “refrain from unilateral acts--including what Palestinians perceive as provocative expansion of settlements, land confiscations, home demolitions and confiscation of IDs. Such actions appear designed to prejudge the outcome of negotiations, and they undermine Palestinian confidence in Israeli intentions.�

A senior aide to Netanyahu immediately rejected Albright’s call for a timeout from settlement expansion.

“You can’t stop building in the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria any more than you can stop life,� said David Bar-Illan, Netanyahu’s spokesman. “Obviously, a living community must grow. That’s exactly what Israel has done, and that’s exactly what we’re going to continue to do.�

Bar-Illan said he did not believe that Albright was asking Israel to freeze settlement building. “The whole thrust of her pronouncements has been that a change in the attitude of the Palestinian leadership on terrorism must be the first thing to happen, after which one can return to the give and take of the peace process.�

The senior U.S. official who gave reporters a late-night assessment of the talks was surprisingly optimistic about Arafat’s pledge.

“We are in a ‘trust but verify’ mode,� the official said, quoting former President Ronald Reagan’s mantra for arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. “But what was said was encouraging.�

The official said Albright described her talks with Arafat to Netanyahu, who is clearly more skeptical of the Palestinian leader’s intentions. The official said Albright and Netanyahu “agreed that was all fine and good, but they both agreed to watch.�

Washington will decide “fairly quickly� if the Palestinian effort is good enough, the official said. He added that the judgment will be made “not in days . . . not in years but weeks or months.�

The Israelis may not be so easy to convince. After hearing Albright’s report on her talks with Arafat, Netanyahu said: “It’s too early to judge whether there’s any movement on the Palestinian side.� But he added that Israel has obtained “concrete information, concrete intelligence that we expect more terrorist attacks. . . . This is a great danger. It still lingers, it looms large.�

Despite Arafat’s pledge on terrorism, Albright conceded that she was far from her goal of restarting the peace process.

“I think that we have a long way to go,� she said during a joint news conference with Arafat. “I think that so far we have managed to get agreement on the fact that terrorists are terrible. But we have not, I think, yet been able to see what the best methods are to get the peace process back on track.�

For Albright, who has been accused by Arabs of pro-Israel bias, Thursday was a day of rhetorical support for Palestinian aspirations.

“The chances that Chairman Arafat or any other Palestinian leaders will resort to terrorism will be greatly reduced if the legitimate rights of the Palestinians are achieved,� she said in her speech at the high school.

Marwan Kanafani, a close advisor and frequent spokesman for Arafat, said the Palestinian leader was gratified by Albright’s call for a timeout in unilateral Israeli actions.

But in Ramallah’s cafes and shops, a glum mood prevailed.

“We have been waiting for Albright for a long time,� said Khaled Mustafa, 58, the owner of an appliance store. “She needs to give us more than words; we want something on the ground, some sign that the Israelis understand that closures, settlements and land confiscations are not the way to make peace. We’re sitting in a cage here.�