Arab-Israeli peace talks will likely resume here April 27, but the subsequent round must take place somewhere else, the United States and Russia announced Monday.
This is the first time the co-sponsors of the 6-month-old Arab-Israeli peace talks have specified when they wanted the negotiations to move closer to the Middle East, although they have supported the notion of doing so.
The United States and Russia sent out invitations over the weekend to Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The co-sponsors also repeated their month-old request for each of the parties to submit a list of 10 acceptable alternative sites, which, to this date, only Israel has done.
Ruth Yaron, the Israeli Embassy spokeswoman, declined Monday to reveal those sites. But Israeli newspapers have reported that the list includes such neutral sites as Italy, Switzerland and Turkey.
Timoor Daghistani, a Jordanian Embassy spokesman, said his government and the other Arab parties will decide what locations to propose at a meeting Wednesday in Beirut.
Israel would prefer to have the talks take place in the region, but the Arab parties do not want to confer that measure of legitimacy on Israel.
The Arabs would prefer to continue to meet in Washington, but Israel has complained about the stress imposed on its negotiators when they are away from their normal jobs for weeks at a time.
WAITING ‘TO SEE WHAT ARABS WILL DO’
The United States will announce the site of the subsequent round of talks before April 27, “whether we have received the list or not,” said State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler.
None of the parties has yet to say whether it will attend the next round of talks, which the State Department has conditioned on their reaching an agreement beforehand on where to hold the subsequent round.
Yaron said that since the United States has proposed settling in advance the locale of the next two rounds of talks, “we basically have given our consent” by having “complied with the American request.”
Israel will now “wait to see what the Arabs will do,” she said.
Daghistani said that “everybody’s determined to continue. I don’t think there’s any reason to doubt that. It’s just a question of where it’s going to be held.”
The Arab parties and Israel have met four times in the last six months, three times in Washington and once in Madrid, where the parties also participated in an opening peace conference.
The most recent round of talks concluded in early March, with the expectation that there would be a six-week break to accommodate the Moslem holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish holiday of Passover.
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