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Netanyahu to meet U.S. Secretary of State empty-handed
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Copyright ) 1997 Nando.net
Copyright ) 1997 The Associated Press
BONN, Germany (December 4, 1997 9:11 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net) --
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Germany on
Thursday to ask Chancellor Helmut Kohl to use his influence with
Israel's Western friends and the Palestinians to spur Mideast peace.
"The chancellor has a big influence on our partners. We trust him and
(Palestinian leader Yasser) Arafat does also," Israel's ambassador to
Germany, Avi Primor, told a Berlin newspaper.
Netanyahu arrived in Bonn late Thursday for the first of several
meetings with European and U.S. officials aimed at pressing his approach
for ending the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Included in the prime minister's itinerary was a meeting with Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright in Paris on Friday.
In the German capital, Netanyahu went straight into a closed meeting
with Kohl that lasted nearly four hours. No statements to reporters were
planned after the meeting, Kohl spokesman Andreas Fritzenkoetter said.
As Netanyahu arrived at Kohl's offices by helicopter, the chancellor
remarked on the damp, chilly Bonn weather, to which Netanyahu replied,
"Well, the atmosphere is warm."
Netanyahu's plan for breaking the stalemate in peace talks calls for
broadening negotiations and skipping over interim steps called for under
existing accords, Primor told Der Tagesspiegel.
Israel maintains that step-by-step negotiations required under the Oslo
accords open too many opportunities for strife. It wants to discuss
remaining obligations to cede land together with larger issues, such as
what kind of state the Palestinians will get.
The Palestinians see this as an Israeli ploy to delay pending transfers
of West Bank areas to Palestinian control.
Netanyahu also hopes Kohl can help smooth relations with Israel's
biggest ally, the United States, which is pressuring Israel to do more
to advance the peace process that has bogged down since Netanyahu came
to power in 1996.
"Our relationship with the United States traditionally is good,"
Netanyahu told Bild Am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.
"But as in the best of families there are differences of opinion. I know
Chancellor Kohl is a great friend, and that in such a case, he can make
his friends happy with his influence."
In Paris, Netanyahu planned to update Albright on Israel's plans for a
redeployment of its forces in the West Bank.
But the prime minister left Israel on Thursday empty-handed, after
failing to reach agreement with senior ministers on an Israeli troop
withdrawal from the West Bank.
"Netanyahu is not taking finalized maps to Albright," said David
Bar-Illan, a top aide to the premier. Bar-Illan said the senior
ministers would meet again Sunday in Jerusalem but that a final proposal
was not likely to be presented to Israel's Cabinet before Dec. 14.
On Sunday, Israel's Cabinet voted to go ahead with a redeployment, but
set no date or size for the withdrawal.
In Washington, the Clinton administration was insistent about the need
for redeployment, which is called for under a U.S.-brokered agreement
with the Palestinians.
"Our goal ... is to see a further redeployment soon, one that is
significant and one that is credible," State Department spokesman James
P. Rubin said Wednesday in Washington.
German policy toward the Jewish state, though colored in the postwar
period by a moral obligation stemming from the Holocaust, has become
increasingly critical of Israel in recent weeks.
For the first time last month, Germany cast a vote criticizing Israel in
one of the perennial U.N. General Assembly resolutions taking Israel to
task over its settlement policy.
Only the United States and Micronesia sided with Israel in the
resolution.
By IAN MADER, Associated Press Writer
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