Marie Colvin - On the Front Line - The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin

For a few moments, Arafat stared through his heavy black-framed glasses into the middle distance, as if trying to see the way ahead. There was none. ‘We are at a real impasse now,’ he sighed.

One possible hope is American mediation. ‘The peace process now needs the attention of the American administration – especially President Clinton,’ the Palestinian leader said. ‘The agreement was signed under his supervision. This is not a bilateral agreement. It is an international agreement.’

Arafat has not yet received an invitation from Washington to take part in a meeting with the Israelis. But some analysts believe the Americans are trying to work out a deal. Sources in Washington say the Clinton administration is trying to piece together a compromise that would include delaying the settlement, rather than definitively stopping it, while simultaneously speeding up the schedule for final negotiations.

At the moment, however, the Americans, who have generally supported Netanyahu’s position that the Palestinians must stop their protests before peace talks can resume, seem intent on winning concessions from Arafat.

Last week Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, telephoned Arafat twice to seek his approval for three-way talks. She urged him to try to calm the violence in the West Bank, arrest Islamic extremists and resume security co-operation with the Israelis.

In one lengthy telephone call, Arafat explained that as Netanyahu had ignited the crisis with his ‘violent’ action of sending in bulldozers, she should be asking the Israelis, not him, for concessions. He could not return to security co-operation before the political negotiations resumed.

‘Let’s not get into a discussion of which came first, the chicken or the egg,’ Albright responded. To which Arafat replied, cryptically: ‘But we have to remember that in the end there is the hen and there is the egg.’ The response of the new secretary of state is not recorded.

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