Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak will go no further than he did at last month's failed Camp David summit in future talks with the Palestinians, a senior Barak aide said on military radio Monday.
"The Prime Minister went a long way towards the Palestinians at Camp David, and he cannot go further," Barak's security adviser Danny Yatom said. "It is now up to the Palestinians to stop being intransigent and show flexibility."
Yatom added that while the Israeli proposals at Camp David were no longer on the table, "clearly they cannot be wiped from the memory of the participants."
He also said that some matters discussed were put forward by the US hosts at the summit, which did not mean that the Israelis had accepted them or felt bound by them.
Camp David collapsed when the Palestinians, which want Israeli-held east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, refused to accept proposals which would give them limited control over the sector but not sovereignty.
Asked about the date of a possible new summit, Yatom said US President Bill Clinton would decide on it in the light of the results of the upcoming visit to the region by his Middle East envoy Dennis Ross.
Yatom also expressed the view that Palestinian President Yasser Aarafat had had a mixed reception during his ongoing tour of various countries seeking support for his stance.
"Those leaders with whom we have also had contacts are opposed to a unilateral declaration of a Palestinians state on September 13th or even later," he said.
The same leaders, whom he did not identify, had instead hailed Barak's "courage and firmness," Yatom added.
Arafat, who arrived in China Monday, has already traveled to about 20 world capitals in less than three weeks, but he seems to have achieved little in terms of firm backing for his stated intention to declare a Palestinian state on September 13th - OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
