Clinton to host Barak, Arafat in high-risk bid to snap impasse

WASHINGTON - Facing a deadlock and a deadline, the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority agreed to meet at Camp David, Md., next week with President Clinton, who announced the summit Wednesday ''to start drawing the contours of the long-awaited peace.''

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, facing increasing political trouble at home, said both sides need to ''seize the opportunity.'' The chief Palestinian negotiator in the bogged-down talks said the summit comes with ''big gaps on all the issues.''

But two of Israel's political parties already have threatened to quit Barak's governing coalition over concern that he might make too many concessions. That could deprive him of the majority needed to make peace.

Clinton, announcing acceptance of his risky invitation at the White House, said staging a summit has ''its perils.'' But if Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ''do not seize this moment, if they cannot make progress now,'' he said, ''there will be more hostility and more bitterness, perhaps even more violence.''

The talks will begin Tuesday in the seclusion of the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will precede them here, meeting this weekend with American mediators.

''I think if we work hard, we can get it done in several days,'' Clinton said. ''But I will give it whatever time is required, as long as we are still moving forward.''

In Paris, where he was consulting with French President Jacques Chirac, Barak said, ''We have to be able to seize the opportunity, exploit it and try to put an end to the conflict, if it's possible, in a way that keeps the dignity and respect of both sides.''

Meanwhile, chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia warned: ''We don't have common ground on any of the issues. There are big gaps on all the issues - Jerusalem, refugees and borders.''

Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart said the president was clearing away most of his schedule next week so he could spend a lot of time with Barak and Arafat. ''I'll work as hard as I need to work,'' Clinton said.

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have lumbered along for nearly seven years, producing Israeli pullbacks on the West Bank and Gaza but not making a dent in the core issues of their half-century dispute. The two sides agreed earlier to reach agreement on all outstanding issues by Sept. 13.

Arafat wants an independent state on virtually all of the land the Arabs lost in the 1967 Mideast war, with East Jerusalem, which Jordan had occupied until then, as its capital.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees are claiming a right to return to Israel, while some 190,000 Israeli Jews have settled on the West Bank and in Gaza, freshly assured by Barak that most will be able to remain in redesigned clusters.

The Israelis and Palestinians began only in the spring to negotiate these issues, and even that slowed down in the last month or so, said a senior U.S. official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

''Etched in each side's mind are intense fears and emotions and deep-seated commitment to defend their peoples' interests,'' Clinton said. ''There are no easy answers and certainly no painless ones, and therefore there is clearly no guarantee of success.''

Barak, referring to the upcoming deadline, ''We'll do our best to have an agreement before the 13th of September.''

His badly shaken government, riven with domestic disputes as well as disagreement over the negotiations, received other shocks Wednesday: Two parties - Natan Sharansky's immigrants party and the National Religious Party - said they would quit the coalition government, leaving Barak with a minority of 59 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Sharansky, the one-time Soviet dissident with a large following among Russian Israelis, also announced he would resign as interior minister.

Qureia, the Palestinian negotiator, cautioned that to have peace Israel must do more than give up part of the land for a state. ''I don't think that this would bring peace to the area,'' he said. ''Rather, it would be the flame that would explode the situation.''

With 6 1/2 months left in his presidency, Clinton hopes to make a Middle East peace agreement part of his legacy.

In light of the huge gaps between the two sides, the summit could result in a partial agreement, although Clinton initially will drive for an overall accord.

Hinting at a less ambitious goal, the senior U.S. official said, ''We will make progress where we can.'' Barak said the goal was an agreement that would cover ''most of the issues on the table, maybe all of them.''

Clinton's venture mirrors former President Jimmy Carter's hosting of a summit at Camp David in 1978 between the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

The result was a peace treaty the next year, the first between Israel and an Arab nation.

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