Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has delivered a document on the explosive issue of the Palestinian Covenant that U.S.officials hope will remove a major stumbling block in the peace process.
But while the Clinton administration is putting a positive spin on Arafat’s first detailed outline of how the palestinians amended their covenant nearly two years ago, Israel is unlikely to share President Clinton’s optimism.
The development comes as the administration is on the verge of dispatching U.S.Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to broker a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Arafat to follow up on an aggressive week of Middle East peacemaking.
During meetings with Arafat, Clinton continued his attempt to sell a new American peace plan that would revive the long-stalled peace talks.
As expected, Clinton talked tough on terrorism, supporting Israel’s demand for increased vigilance against terrorists.
During an Oval Office meeting Thursday, Arafat handed Clinton a letter that for the first time detailed the specific articles of the covenant that the palestinians say were annulled by a 1996 vote of the Palestine National council.
Whether in fact the PNC’s action in 1996 actually fulfilled the Palestinian commitment to amend its charter calling for the destruction of Israel has long been a matter of debate.
For his part, Arafat, in his letter to Clinton, restated the more general Palestinian position:”All of the provisions of the covenant which are inconsistent with the PLO commitment to recognize and live in peace side by side with Israel are no longer in effect.”
But this time Arafat went further, spelling out by number which specific sections of articles and entire articles the palestinians nullified.
Of the 33 articles of the covenant, only five remain intact, he said. According to the letter, 12 have been completely nullified and 16 have been changed.
But whereas Arafat is contending that these changes will be evident in any future distribution of the covenant, Netanyahu has made clear that he will only accept a formal vote by the PNC.
“We want that charter revised not in a letter to president Clinton,”but in a “constitutional act where the official bodies of the Palestinian leadership and the palestinian people meet and tear up that paper,”Netanyahu told a Jewish gathering earlier this week, suggesting that he knew of Arafat’s letter.
The Israeli demand for a new covenant was included a year ago in the Note for the Record attached to the Hebron Agreement.
As recently as Monday, top Netanyahu aide David Bar-Illan complained that the Palestinians had sent, upon Israeli request, a copy of the covenant to the Israelis unchanged from 1964, including the Hebrew spelling mistakes.
Nonetheless, the United States hailed the letter as an important peacemaking gesture.
James Rubin, State Department spokesman, called the letter “an important step toward completing the process of revising the charter.”
U.S. officials said they immediately forwarded the letter to Israeli officials, who did not have an immediate comment.
After the first of two scheduled meetings with Clinton, Arafat told reporters, “As far as we’re concerned, this issue has been put to rest.”
In his meetings, meanwhile, Clinton detailed specific areas in which Arafat can improve his war against terrorism, U.S. officials said.
Clinton told Arafat that he wants a “credible and significant” Israeli redeployment. But Clinton told arafat that while any withdrawal will be less than the 30 percent Arafat has demanded, it will be more than the single-digit percentage that Netanyahu has proposed.
Clinton also laid out for Arafat the emerging U.S. plan for a phased further Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, contingent on specific Palestinian actions on combating terrorism.
According to senior palestinian officials, Arafat told Clinton,”I am willing to take one step, two steps, three steps on security and the charter as long as the palestinian goal of an independent state is intact.”
After meeting with George Tenet, director of the CIA, and later with Albright, Arafat was scheduled to return to the White House. Then in his only public appearance, Arafat was scheduled to speak at a reception hosted by the Center for Middle East peace and Economic Cooperation.
By all accounts, he also was still planning a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington some time before his scheduled departure Friday.
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