Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is maintaining that Israel’s tough stand on security issues is beginning to show positive results in the negotiations with the Palestinians.
Rabin made the assessment Sunday when he met with reporters to discuss the meeting in Oslo the day before between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat.
Peres and Arafat were in Oslo to attend the funeral of Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst, who had been instrumental in lining up a series of secret talks last year in the Norwegian capital that led to the historic self- rule agreement between Israel and the PLO.
U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, also in Oslo for the funeral, met separately with Peres and Arafat in an effort to get the Israeli-PLO negotiations back on track.
The negotiations for implementing the self-rule accord have been stalled on several security issues, particularly the question of who will control the border crossings between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and between the West Bank town of Jericho and Jordan.
At the Oslo meeting with Arafat, Peres reportedly demanded that Israel maintain exclusive control at the Jordan River crossings, and that travelers would encounter Palestinian border personnel only after an initial screening by the Israeli army.
Arafat reportedly did not contest this position.
Peres also told Arafat that a $25 million fund is being established in Holst’s memory that would be used to finance projects in the Palestinian autonomous regions once the accord went into effect.
The two are scheduled to meet again next weekend in Switzerland.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiations on security and the transfer of civilian responsibilities were scheduled for Monday at the Sinai border town of Taba.
On Monday as well, bilateral negotiations will resume in Washington. Israeli and Syrian negotiators will meet for the first time in four months to discuss the normalization of relations between Jerusalem and Damascus.
On the eve of the resumption of Middle East peace talks in Washington, President Clinton and Jordan’s King Hussein held a private meeting last Friday at the White House.
“We’re working on our agenda and all the items there, and I hope the crowning achievement will be a peace treaty,” the king told reporters.
A spokeswoman at the Jordanian Embassy in Washington said that Clinton and Hussein also discussed others elements in the U.S.-Jordanian relationship, including aid to Jordan.
“Jordan seeks assistance in terms of its debt problem,” she said.
Arafat flew to Cairo on Sunday and met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He then flew on to Damascus, where he offered his condolences to Syrian President Hafez Assad, whose son, Bassel, died Friday in a car accident.
From Damascus, Arafat was scheduled to fly to Saudi Arabia for what would be his first visit there since the rupture of relations between the Saudis and the PLO during the 1991 Gulf War.
Arafat’s support of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in the war had angered the Saudis, who subsequently stopped providing financial support to the PLO.
While in Saudi Arabia, Arafat will make a religious pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
