The Israeli-Palestinian summit, which opened Tuesday at Camp David in the United States should last a total of two weeks, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told public radio.
"We cannot know exactly how long this summit will go on, as no target date was fixed, but I suppose that a total duration of two weeks represents a reasonable period of time for the Israeli prime minister to be away," Gadi Baltiansky said Saturday.
"The Americans tried before the summit to fix an end date before US President Bill Clinton leaves in the middle of next week for Japan, but they dropped the idea," he said.
Baltiansky added that "there is no particular problem in extending the discussions by three or four days if no agreement is reached during President Clinton's trip to Japan, the main thing is to reach a good agreement."
The US president is due to leave Wednesday for Japan to take part in a summit of the G8, the seven leading industrial nations and Russia. He is due back in the US July 25th.
Separately, public radio said that according to members of the Israeli team in Camp David, the US peace brokers, who have already put forward compromise ideas verbally, will not make an official presentation of their proposals on the main subjects of discussion such as the future of Jerusalem or the future of the Palestinian refugees, before the middle of next week.
By then, President Clinton will try to find "arrangements" with the Palestinians to avoid an outright rejection by them, the radio said - OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
