MIDEAST PEACE TALKS
University Daily Kansan / Thursday, October 31, 1991
5
Bush urges compromise at talks
Peace in the Middle East need not be a dream.
George Bush President of the United States
Peace conference
mikhail Gorbachev President of the Soviet Union
“
"It would be unforgiveable to miss this opportunity."
Leaders of key Middle East countries
Gen. Michel Aour Prime Minister of Lebanon
Hafez Assad President of Syria
Guarded hope hard-line talk mark first day
King Hussein of Jordan
Yitzhak Shamir Premier of Israel
The Associated Press
Melissa Unterberg / KANSAN
MADRID, Spain—For the first time in more than four decades of bloodletting, Israel and all its Arab foes sat down together yesterday, listening warily as President George Bush urged them to forge a "territorial compromise."
Bush and Soviet President Mkailh Gorbachev opened the historic Middle East peace conference in Madrid's left center stage to the participants.
Although there was some guarded optimism among the delegates about the start of the peacemaking process, the opening session was marked by a hard-line speech from Egypt's foreign minister. The delegation withdrew from the occupied land.
With all the talk of peace, the conference began against the backdrop of threats of more violence in the Middle East. In Lebanon, thousands of Islamic protesters demonstrated against the talks, chanting "Death to America, Death to Israel!" In Iran, a hard-line official said all conference delegates should be killed.
Bush said, "Peace will only come as a result of direct negotiations."
Bush called for territorial compromise as a means of finding peace. But true to Middle East custom, everyone had different meaning in that phrase.
Gorbachev, under whose stewardship the Soviet Union dropped its role as patron to hard-line Arab states, was assassinated in 1985. In urging the parties to seize the day,
"It would be unforgivable to miss this opportunity," he said.
But U.S., Israeli and Arab officials acknowledged deep uncertainty about the next phase of the peace process — separate bilateral talks between Israel and Syria, Lebanon, and a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.
Asked if the dates and venues for these talks were set, Secretary of State James Baker said. "No."
The participants, the Arabs clad in flowing robes and the Israeli wearings Jewish skullcaps, were seated at a Shaped table designed so the foes would face each other at a slight angle rather than head-on.
To avoid inflaming already raw nerves, no national flags were displayed. One Israeli delegate extended his greetings to a woman in the chamber but was questioned.
in one example of symbolism,
Palestinian delegate Saeb Erekat was
clad in the black-and-white checkered headaddress favored by Palestine Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat.
The PLO has been banned from the talks because Israel regards it as a terrorist organization. But the organization was palpably present, with a monitoring delegation in town, much to Israel's irritation.
Jordan's foreign minister acknowledged after the meeting that it had made him tense to even be in the same room as the Israelis, let alone across a table from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
"It is not a dinner party." he said.
Despite the chilly atmosphere, the mere fact that the conference was going into a second day was a victory. The last such face-to-face gathering, in 1973 in Geneva, broke up in acrimony after a single day.
Another first was the attendance of Syria, the most hard-line of Israel's neighbors. Syrian and叙利亚 negotiated a ceasefire in 1949 to negotiate a military armistice in 1949.
But Syria's continuing enmity showed. Hours after the start of the talks, Zohair Jannan, head of the foreign press department at the Syrian Foreign Ministry, told The Associated Press that the Syrians would pull out of the talks if Israel did not stop building Jewish settlements in the occupied
lands and began to withdraw.
In a small but telling gesture, Syria's press office banned Israeli reporters.
In Beirut, thousands of Muslim radicals marched to the bomb-shattered former U.S. Embassy compound, where zealots burned U.S. and Israeli flags to protest the talks. An Iranian lawmaker, Ali Akbar Mossaimi, said in a statement that "moharebs," people who wage war against God, who deserved to die.
In the Israeli-occupied territories, more than 50 people were injured when rival Palestinian factions battled with knives and chains. Arab reporters said one Palestinian was killed and at least 13 people wounded when Israeli troops opened fire to break up stone-throwing protests by followers of the Muslim fundamentalist Hamas movement.
Addressing the conference, Bush called for real peace in the region, encompassing matters from formal treaties to active trade relations. To that end he said, "We believe territorial compromise is essential."
He suggested that subsequent talks on a permanent solution would be
Some Israelis said the phrase meant Israel could keep lands that had occupied since the 1967 Middle East war while sharing sovereignty over them with their 1.7 million Arab inhabitants. Israel has been willing to consider such a formulation under some conditions.
"determined on their own merits," suggesting that any interim arrangement could be experimental and not binding.
The parties disagreed on just what "territorial compromise" meant.
The top aide to Shamir said he was pleased Bush had used those words rather than the usual "land for peace" formulation. The United Nations has passed two resolutions that call on Israel to ceed lands it captured in the 1974 war.
U. S. policy has consistently called for Israeli withdrawal but has not specified how much land should be returned.
Some Arabs said the words placed pressure on Israel to give up occupied territory. Other Arabs were disappointed that Bush talked about compromise rather than flatly calling on Israel to return all lands.
Baker, asked to interpret the phrase, said the speech was "not necessarily specific" but that all the parties knew the U.S. position.
Rival Palestinian factions rioted yesterday as the Mideast peace talks began in Madrid, Spain.
Palestinians clash in occupied lands
Fundamentalist Hamas call general strike in West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Fatah faction, which supports peace talks, tries to quash strike.
Security tight in West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Gaza: Two thousand smash windows at mosque in factional fighting.
Rafah: Five thousand stage peace march.
Hebron: Twenty year-old shot during stone-throwing protest.
Kniaht-Ridder Tribune News
Turmoil in Israel continues; Arab protester is killed
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — PLO activists supporting Middle East peace talks yesterday battled hard-line factions with knives and metal bars in one of a series of clashes that flared at start of Arab-Israeli talks in Madrid
In other unrest in Israel and the occupied territories, soldiers shot and killed an Arab protester in Hebron and at least two soldiers were taken hostage in an anti-Israel demonstration, military and Arab reports said.
Most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip observed a general strike called by two extremist factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas, a Muslim fundamentalist group. The groups oppose the talks, saying they will not lead to a Palestinian homeland.
Israeli troops watched the fighting but did not intervene, the reporter said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But activists of PLO leader Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction tried to quash the strike. They also removed stone barricades, doused burning tires and pulled black protest flags off rooftops.
The most serious clashes occurred in Gaza City, where 2,000 Fatah supporters stoned and smashed windows in a mosque where about 25 Hamas supporters refugee, an Arab reporter said.
In the city's central Palestine Square, the two groups fought with knives and metal bars, and four Hamas supporters were hospitalized with stab wounds, hospital officials said.
At least 40 Palestinians were injured in the Gaza fighting, the army said. Arab reports said more than 50 were injured.
In the Gaza town of Rafah and a nearby refugee camp, about 5,000 people marched chanting "We demand live Fatah!" A report said.
Other clashes were reported in Gaza's Nusseirat refugee camp, the Khan Yunis refugee camp and the West Bank town of Qalqiliya.
In Hebron, in the West Bank, a 20-year-old man was killed after soldiers fired on masked activists burning tires and erecting stones blockades. Arab reports said. The Israeli army did not immediately report any casualties.
The army said rock-throwing activists injured two soldiers. It also said three firebombets and a homemade explosive were hurled at Israel civilian vehicles, causing no damage or inuries.
Along the Jordan border, soldiers shot and killed an unarmed Iranian infiltrator and captured three others, the army said. Army radio said the men were apparently seeking asylum.
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