The Middle East peace talks in London will resume this morning. But there were fears last night that the peace process was in danger of running into the sand after gloomy assessments from the Americans, who are driving the talks.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, held two meetings with the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday - one lasting five hours between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., and a later 90-minute meeting which ended at 9.15 p.m.
In between, she held talks with the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, for 90 minutes, but an expected second meeting was postponed until later today. Ms Albright is to have a third meeting with Mr Netanyahu at 8 a.m. today.
A US State Department spokesman, Mr James Rubin, said last night after Ms Albright's prolonged meetings, that a gloomy assessment he had given earlier in the evening still stood.
He said then that the position was unchanged from before the two leaders flew into London for the meetings - namely that gaps between the two sides remained significant. He said: "We have no compelling evidence at this point that we are going to be able to bridge these gaps.
"Our optimism is not high based on the evidence we have seen so far."
Mr Rubin said the significant gaps focused primarily on scope for further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and the necessary security steps that would have to be taken. He had spoken earlier of the "possibility" of a three-way, Netanyahu-ArafatAlbright meeting today.
An Israeli spokesman was more upbeat. He said: "We are hopeful. That is all we can say."
While Mr Arafat has already publicly accepted an American proposal for restoring momentum to the process, Mr Netanyahu is balking at the US demand for a swift Israeli withdrawal from another 13 per cent of occupied West Bank land.
He is also deeply concerned at the prospect of Mr Arafat unilaterally declaring Palestinian statehood next year, and fearful that the US might join much of the international committee in recognising such a state.
The Israeli Prime Minister said yesterday that he had "come here to try and achieve a breakthrough", but that he wasn't sure whether it was feasible.
Mr Arafat countered that if this London summit failed, "Mr Netanyahu will have to bear the responsibility . . . for the chaos that will ensue."
There has been no substantive progress in peace efforts since March 1997, when Mr Netanyahu sent bulldozers to clear land for a Jewish neighbourhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem, at Har Homah, on land captured by Israel in the 1967 war and regarded by the Palestinians as theirs.
In recent weeks, the US administration, which has acted as a guarantor and a mediator of the Oslo process set in motion by Mr Arafat and the late Yitzhak Rabin in 1993, has been hinting that it may "disengage" from the process if a breakthrough is not achieved soon.
In hosting the London summit, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has sought to revive peace hopes and upgrade his own and the European Union's profile in the Middle East.
But if the talks end in failure, there is a very real prospect of a return to the pre-1993 era of Middle Eastern violence, complete with relentless Israeli-Palestinian clashes in the Occupied Territories, and intensifying Arab hostility to Israel.
One of Mr Arafat's leading ministers, Mr Nabil Shaath, said yesterday, "There is a very simple American proposal . . . that must be said `Yes' or `No' to today."
But Mr Netanyahu, in his talks with Ms Albright, was arguing that the situation is far from simple. Israeli sources say he is ready in principle to order a pullout from a further 11 per cent more of the West Bank, but only if he is then excused from his own prior commitment to another withdrawal in the near future.
Rather than continuing a process of phased withdrawals that he believes would leave Israel bereft of bargaining chips when it comes to negotiating a permanent peace treaty, the sources say, the Israeli Prime Minister wants to accelerate efforts to reach that permanent deal.
Mr Arafat, not surprisingly, is determined to hold Mr Netanyahu to the original phased framework.
An Israeli parole board last night rejected a request from the jailed former nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, for early release. Additional reporting AFP