By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - In a move to stop the escalation of violence on the West Bank and Gaza, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will meet in Paris tomorrow with Israeli Prime MInister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Albright, already in the French capital meeting with government officials on a range of topics, said the two sides "must find a way..to end the current psychology of confrontation and begin to restore the psychology of peacemaking."
"This is what we will be trying to achieve in the meetings," she said in the statement, released here by the State Department.
Earlier yesterday, President Clinton urged the Israelis and Palestinians to "do everything within their power" to restore calm and prevent further bloodshed on the West Bank and Gaza, shaken by the worst violence in four years.
Clinton said the fighting actually might spur both sides to return to peace negotiations. "We'll just have to see if we make some more progress tomorrow morning over there," he said. "I think it will be better tomorrow. I hope it will."
A Clinton-led diplomatic drive had virtually run out of steam even before the outbreak of five days of fighting. Clinton acknowledged the violence is a further setback. "In the short run it's hurting them because they can't do anything on the peace process until people stop dying and the violence stops," the president told reporters.
"But when the smoke clears here, it might actually be a spur to both sides as a sober reminder to what the alternative to peace could be," Clinton said. "So we have to hope and pray that will be the result."
Clinton said Barak and Arafat "must do everything within their power to stop the violence, and I think they are now trying. We are going to do everything we can."
Clinton spoke by telephone during the weekend to Arafat and Barak and will remain in touch with them through the week, spokesman Jake Siewert said. The president talked by telephone yesterday with Jordan's King Abdullah and with French President Jacques Chirac regarding the Middle East.
The president said it was "heartbreaking" to see a videotape of a young Palestinian boy who died in his father's arms as they crouched for cover. He said he wondered if the father could have done anything more to shield his child.
Israelis and Palestinians ignored appeals from around the world for a cease-fire, and waged fierce gun battles throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Clinton and his top aides had predicted an outbreak of violence absent a peace agreement.
Last week, the State Department singled out as provocation for the violence a visit by Ariel Sharon, leader of Israel's hard-line opposition Likud party, to the steps of ancient mosques atop Jerusalem's Old City.
In a letter yesterday to Albright, Sharon called the accusation false, disturbing and totally unacceptable.
He said "slanderous propaganda" on the part of Palestinian leaders and the media had swayed the State Department. Their intention, he said, was to put pressure on Israel and the United States to make additional concessions.
James Phillips, director of Middle East research at the Heritage Foundation, said he disagrees that the former general "is the major reason this happened."
"The Palestinians repeatedly have exploited tensions to make political points to increase their leverage in negotiations," Phillips said in an interview. "I think he (Sharon) has been exploited by Palestinian radicals to aggravate the situation and to increase pressure on Israel to make concessions."
Geoffrey Kemp, head of the Middle East desk in President Reagan's White House and now Mideast specialist at the Nixon Center, said, however: "Sharon's defiance is a seminal moment, because it's going to intensify not just Palestinian but Arab, Muslim and European sentiment that unilateral Israeli control over East Jerusalem is simply unacceptable in the future."
Kemp said he doubts that Clinton can do much for compromise "until, unfortunately, things get worse." In the long run, he said, violence "should make compromise more possible.'"
For the time being, Clinton received approval by Barak and Arafat of a fact-finding assessment of security problems in the area. After the two sides compile their findings, U.S. officials will hold a joint meeting with Israeli and Palestinian experts, the White House said Sunday night.
Edward Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Syria, said he doesn't think the process is dead. Rather, he said, "it's at one of these junctures where the pace of violence on the ground is beginning to outpace the negotiations themselves."
Djerejian, now with the Baker Institute at Rice University, urged Clinton to resume talks between Israel and the Palestinians at various levels to produce at least the perception "that there is still very much a chance for peace."
"This will help avoid a deterioration of an already bad situation," Djerejian said.
