Israel Rejects U.S. 'Dictates' on Troop Pullback
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Wednesday that he will reject President Clinton's invitation to Middle East peace talks in Washington if acceptance means Israel acquiescing to U.S. "dictates" on the scope of a West Bank troop withdrawal.
A day after returning from U.S.-mediated talks in London that ended without reviving the moribund peace process, Netanyahu took a tough line against new pressure from the Clinton administration to accept a package of U.S. proposals.
"We are a sovereign state, [and] we won't accept dictates about things only we can determine--our security, our lives," he told Israel Radio. "I won't hand over land [if it] would endanger Israel's security. If they come with an ultimatum, without mediation or other options, we won't accept it."
Publicly at least, the Israeli leader appeared willing to risk confrontation with the U.S. administration, which on Tuesday extended invitations to Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to come to Washington for the summit Monday, on condition that they first accept the U.S. proposals.
The purpose of the meeting, outlined by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in London, would be to accelerate negotiations on a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Netanyahu has said he favors opening those discussions--on such sensitive issues as the status of Jerusalem and Palestinian statehood--as soon as possible. But the United States first wants a commitment on Israeli troop withdrawals.
Arafat has agreed to the U.S. proposals but Netanyahu has not, insisting that the plan for Israel to withdraw from an additional 13% of the West Bank is impossible for security reasons. The invitation has been seen as giving the Israeli leader a deadline to accept the proposals, while extending the "carrot" of final status talks.
But in a White House news conference Wednesday, Clinton said he was not trying to force a solution on Israel: "There's no way in the world I could impose an agreement on them or dictate their security to them, even if I wished to do that, which I don't. I don't believe Israel or any other country should accept the dictates of the United States in a peace process.
"We cannot and we should not attempt to impose a peace on parties, because they have to live with the consequences," the president said. "We are talking about a settlement of a sufficient number of issues that will permit them to get into the final status talks within the framework embodied by the agreement signed here in September 1993."
