Israeli and Arab negotiators are making progress in the low-key multilateral phase of the Middle East peace process, a top State Department official said this week.
“We’ve seen an increasing pace and scope of activity in the process,” Daniel Kurtzer, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, told reporters at a special briefing Wednesday.
The multilateral phase of the peace process, involving Middle Eastern and other countries, has often been in the shadow of the higher-profile bilateral talks between Israel and Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians.
The multilateral talks include working groups on regional economic development, refugees, arms control and regional security, environment and water.
Among the projects underway as a result of the multilateral talks are a rainwater catchment project in Gaza, a mutual declaration on arms control and regional security, environmental issues, waste water treatment and desertification, Kurtzer said.
“Each of the groups began to focus in on one or two specific projects that could be seen by peoples in the region and show them that there could potentially be fruits of peace that would come at a time when the core issues of the conflict were also being addressed,” Kurtzer added.
The bilateral and multilateral talks are complementary phases of the peace process, which is co-sponsored by the United States and Russia.
“The bilateral negotiations remain at the core of resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute,” said Kurtzer, a key player on the State Department’s Middle East team.
On that front, reports Wednesday from the Sinai border town of Taba, where talks are continuing between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, indicate that the two sides are making progress.
Negotiators were nearing agreement on the size of the future Palestinian police force that will assume responsibilities in the Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho once the Palestinian self-rule accord is implemented.
The Taba talks have also dealt with a number of civilian issues – including communications, electricity, public works, postal services and travel documents – that will fall under Palestinian authority under the terms of the accord signed in Washington last September.
A separate committee began meeting in Taba on Wednesday to discuss the release of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails for political crimes.
Negotiators in the multilateral talks were meanwhile seeking more “concreteness” in their discussions, and more “visible activity” to address regional problems, according to Kurtzer.
In response to the concerns of the parties, the steering group coordinating the multilateral talks held a meeting last week in Ottawa. Kurtzer headed the U.S. delegation to the meeting.
Participants in the meeting decided to increase the pace and scope of the working groups’ activities, Kurtzer said. In addition, participants decided to formulate guidelines to encourage the working groups to look ahead to implementation of future bilateral agreements between Israel and its Arab negotiating partners.
And finally, the participants have put high priority on formulating regional developmental priorities, similar to an earlier study on the West Bank and Gaza that proved useful after the Sept. 13 Israeli-Palestinian agreement, Kurtzer said.
In his remarks Wednesday, Kurtzer touched on various facets of the complex multilateral process and its related activities. He said that there had been so many activities involving the regional parties that the State Department had decided to postpone a related business roundtable in Washington.
“We heard from a number of parties in the region that they were being inundated by meetings,” Kurtzer said.
One fly in the ointment has been the unwillingness of the Syrians and the Lebanese – two key participants in the peace process – to participate in the multilateral talks.
Kurtzer said the United States and Russia had been keeping Syria and Lebanon apprised of developments in the multilateral talks, and “we have used every opportunity to try to encourage their participation.
“One way of doing this is to reduce the concerns that we have heard from Syria and Lebanon that the multilaterals may, in fact, precede a resolution of the core issues in bringing about progress,” Kurtzer added.
Kurtzer said that the refugee working group, which deals with a sensitive issue, had made “some very concrete progress.”
The working group has conducted a study on the health and social conditions of refugees, and has worked on training programs for refugees. Refugees are defined as those who were “displaced as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
On the economic front, Kurtzer said the parties are considering holding a large business conference in Amman, Jordan. The economic working group has created an “action plan” that deals with transportation, tourism, economic development, communications, and agriculture priorities, Kurtzer said.
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