A crucial Middle East summit got under way at Camp David in rural Maryland yesterday with the host, President Clinton, warning the Israeli and Palestinian leaders that "there can be no success without principled compromise."
The summit, which is expected to last up to a week at the presidential retreat in the Appalachians, will have to seek agreement on such difficult issues as the Israeli handover of occupied territory, the status of Jerusalem and the return of over a million Palestinian refugees to their homes which some of them lost as far back as the 1948 Middle East war.
President Clinton met Chairman Yasser Arafat and Mr Ehud Barak separately at the start of the talks. All three were conscious that Camp David was the site of the successful Israel-Egypt negotiations in 1978 under President Jimmy Carter. Mr Clinton brought a copy of a book on how these talks succeeded after 13 days.
TV cameras were allowed to film the three leaders taking a walk in the woods but Mr Clinton said firmly that they had pledged "to answer no questions and offer no comments." For the rest of the talks there is expected to be a virtual news blackout.
Speaking at the White House before he travelled the 70 miles to Camp David by helicopter with aides and his Labrador, Buddy, Mr Clinton said that "the road to peace as always, is a two-way street." While there was not guarantee of success, "not to try is to guarantee failure."
The President said: "Both leaders feel the weight of history but both, I believe, recognise this is a moment in history which they can seize. We have an opportunity to bring about a just and enduring end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Mr Clinton would not accept that Mr Barak's weakened political position at home, after narrowly escaping a motion of no confidence, would affect the negotiations. He said that polls showed that he still had more than 50 per cent of popular support and in any case he would be bringing back any results to the Israeli people to be approved by referendum. The President recalled that when the former Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was negotiating, he often had only a one-vote majority in the Knesset.
Mr Barak who flew to Washington immediately after the stormy debate in the Knesset, told Israeli reporters travelling with him that he planned to free 30 Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture. He also said that he expects the US to present a "bridging document" to both sides indicating possible compromises but White House spokesman, Mr Joe Lockhart, has declined to say whether this was correct and said he will not be offering any "progress reports."
The Palestinian spokeswoman, Ms Hanan Ashrawi, told a press conference in Washington that "Israel should not come to the negotiations with extremist positions such as not returning to the 1967 boundaries or maintaining sovereignty over Jerusalem or rejecting the return of refugees."
The Israeli spokesperson, Mr Yuli Tamir, said "Arafat knows now more than ever there will not be a prime minister more determined than Barak to bring an end to this conflict. Arafat will do well if he understands this."
But Ms Ashrawi said that while Mr Barak may be a flexible leader, "If the best is not good enough to achieve a genuine peace, we are not going to have a flawed peace that will lead to conflict."
Several dozen young Jewish activists demonstrated peacefully at the press centre for the talks which is a school in the small town of Thurmont about 20 miles from Camp David. The 70 demonstrators were aligned with the "Peace Now" movement.