Israel’s 30-member delegation arrived in Washington on Sunday prepared to begin talks Tuesday morning with the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
“We come here with an open heart and intention to negotiate with our neighbors,” said Yossi Ben-Aharon, director general of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, who is heading the team that will negotiate with Syria.
While reiterating that Israel would prefer the talks to be taking place in the Middle East, Ben-Aharon said Israel is ready to discuss all issues, whether procedural or substantive.
The United States originally invited Israel and the Arab delegations to open talks in Washington on Dec. 4. Israel, which had insisted on a Middle East venue, balked at what it considered U.S. pressure to conform.
The Israelis said they would show up on Dec. 9. But the Palestinians, who dutifully appeared Dec. 4 at the State Department meeting site, refuse to come on Monday, which is the fourth anniversary of the start of the intifada.
Therefore, Israel will not show up either on Monday. “We don’t want to play the empty chair game,” an Israeli spokesman said Sunday.
After a considerable amount of jockeying, the two sides apparently have agreed to come to the table on Tuesday. But a few snags have emerged that could complicate the talks.
Israel is refusing to negotiate with the Palestinian delegation if it includes Dr. Saeb Erekat, who announced before the Oct. 30 opening of the peace conference in Madrid that he considered himself an appointee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
‘IF HE IS THERE, WE ARE NOT THERE’
Israel has advised the State Department that it will not take part in the talks if Erekat is part of the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.
“If he is there, we are not there,” the Israeli spokesman said. That position has been made clear to the Americans and the Palestinians are aware of it, the spokesman said.
Erekat was the Palestinian delegate who sat at the Madrid conference last month first wearing a kaffiyeh (headdress) symbolic of the PLO over his shoulders and later as a scarf.
Israeli Cabinet Secretary Elyakim Rubinstein, who heads the Israeli team negotiating with the Palestinians, informed Erekat in Madrid that if he persisted in participating in the bilateral negotiations, he could wreck them.
After Erekat told a Cable Network News interviewer in October that the PLO appointed him a member of the delegation, Israel vowed to have nothing to do with any delegation to which he belonged.
In Israel, the daily newspaper Ha’aretz reported that in its contacts with Israel before convening the Washington talks, the United States promised that no one from the PLO’s Tunis establishment would be granted a U.S. entry visa or allowed to come to Washington.
It transpired, however, that entry visas were granted Akram Haniya and Taysir Aiuri, two deportees serving as PLO advisers.
Israel raised objections with the United States. But no further action is planned.
Barring new obstacles, the talks will open Tuesday. However, Israel is expected to press for the next round to be held in the Middle East or at least closer to the region than Washington.
U.S. ‘CANNOT DELIVER ISRAEL’
Secretary of State James Baker, appearing Sunday on the CBS-TV show “Face the Nation,” said Washington has made facilities available for negotiations since Dec. 4, and it is up to the parties to decide whether they want to use them.
There are three separate entrances and three separate rooms available at the State Department for the three different negotiations Israel will have with Syria, Lebanon and the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.
Baker said the United States would participate in the talks unless asked by both parties. “It would be much better if the parties would get together and would sit down and would engage not just procedurally, but substantively,” he said.
Israeli officials said last week that one of the reasons Israel delayed its participation was to make the point to Washington and to the Arabs that the United States cannot “deliver” Israel, even on procedural issues.
Benjamin Netanyahu, deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, said it was best to get this point established at the outset before substantive issues were discussed.
But Baker said Sunday that he “made it very clear” to both Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and to the Arabs that “we cannot deliver Israel, and we would not if we could.”
He said direct bilateral negotiations are “the only way that the parties are going to get to peace, and that’s the only way that any agreement that is reached is going to be lasting.”
But Baker also said the United States is going to continue to be a “catalyst” and a “driving force” to move the process ahead.
He said if the United States and the Soviet Union had not set the time and place for the bilateral talks, “I dare to say the parties would still have not gotten to the table.”
(JTA correspondent Hugh Orgel in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.)
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