Sorry, Still No Sale

By Bruce W. Nelan

The symbolism surrounding Bill Clinton's witness-for-peace visit to the Middle East was almost too perfect. At the desert border crossing where he met Jordan's King Hussein and Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to co-sign their treaty of friendship, the table was set up on an asphalt strip in the middle of a minefield. An area had been paved and fenced in specifically for the ceremony. "Walk 15 yards beyond that barbed wire," a U.S. Secret Service agent warned onlookers, "and you won't be coming back."

Another warning of danger outside the wire-rimmed islet of peace sounded in the north, where militiamen, presumably from the Muslim extremist group Hizballah, in Lebanon exchanged fire with Israeli troops. And in the Gaza Strip the Palestine Liberation Organization's leader Yasser Arafat, with whom Israel made peace last year, called a general strike. He was protesting a clause in the treaty that lends weight to Jordan's claim to protect Jerusalem's Muslim holy places.

Clinton's four-day, six-country tour, his first foray into the Middle East, taught him just how treacherous a terrain he had entered. He had hoped for a prime-time TV triumph to boost his party's midterm election chances when he seized upon the Israeli-Jordanian settlement to fly off to dramatic presidential appearances in Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Jerusalem, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. He quickly discovered that the Middle East and its problems guarantee not only the world's attention but risks, surprises and, for every misstep, a potential explosion.

The trip began joyously with the moving ceremony formalizing peace between Israel and Jordan. Hussein and Rabin were notably warm to each other and to Clinton, and their heartfelt words bespoke an authentic friendship and respect. That heady afternoon built expectations of more good news; Israel especially hoped the President could find a way to speed up its glacial negotiations over the Golan Heights. But Clinton immediately ran up against Syria's President Hafez Assad.

Before going to Damascus to meet Assad, Clinton warned there would be no "dramatic breakthrough," explaining carefully that he hoped only to give the stalled negotiations a push forward. After his four hours of talks, Clinton claimed he had done that -- at least in private. "We've made some progress today," he said, "the details of which I'm not at liberty to discuss." Though evidence of such progress was scant, Rabin politely agreed there was some. Syrians and Israelis alike told Clinton they wanted peace and would work to achieve it. That was slightly promising and probably about the best Clinton could have hoped for his first time around.

Setting off from Washington on Tuesday, the Clintons flew first to Cairo. President Hosni Mubarak and his wife met them at the airport and then sat up talking until after 2 a.m. It was not just a social call; Mubarak played a pivotal role as counselor in the week's events. He had invited Arafat in for a chat and pressed him to make a public statement condemning the recent wave of terror attacks on Israel. When Arafat was later asked whether he backed peace or the extremists of Hamas, he duly said, "My choice is the peace, the peace of the brave." Clinton also asked Mubarak about the best approaches to use with Assad, and Mubarak later phoned Damascus to lay the groundwork for Clinton's arrival. "It's not just intelligence Mubarak provides," said a U.S. official. "It's insight."

After the treaty ceremony in the desert Wednesday, Clinton stopped briefly in Amman, where he told the Jordanian parliament, "You have sent a signal to the entire Arab world that peace is unstoppable." A test of that prediction came the next day in Damascus. Clinton was taking a chance on Assad, rewarding him up front with a telegenic official visit by a U.S. President, even though Syria is still listed by the State Department as a sponsor of terrorism. For his part, Clinton wanted to hear Assad offer public assurances that he opposes the kind of terror Hamas has been inflicting on Israel and that he favors a formal peace settlement of the sort Jordan and Egypt have signed.

Senior members of the U.S. delegation even thought they had figured out how to elicit such statements. They invited onto the press plane an Israeli journalist who, at the news conference scheduled to be held in Assad's marble palace, could be expected to ask a leading question. The ploy backfired. When the journalist asked Assad whether he might ease Israeli fears by opening direct talks or visiting the country, Assad coldly turned aside the chance to offer reassurance, saying instead that one country's security concerns were no excuse for holding on to another country's territory.

Assad was referring to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 war. He had told Clinton, he said, that Syria was ready to establish "peaceful, normal relations with Israel in return for Israel's full withdrawal from the Golan," as spelled out in several U.N. Security Council resolutions. That sounds like a simple swap, but Israel has not agreed to withdraw completely. Rabin wants to pull back in stages over several years, testing in the process whether Syria's idea of peace includes diplomatic relations, open borders, free trade and tourism.

The Syrian leader also apparently outfoxed Clinton on the terrorism issue. U.S. officials say that in private talks Assad not only deplored terror attacks but twice promised to repeat his condemnation at the press conference, with specific reference to last month's bus bombing in Tel Aviv, which killed 23 people. But he failed to do so and even denied that terrorism had been discussed "as a separate topic." That forced the White House into a scramble to revise the impression. Flying out of Damascus, Clinton told reporters he regretted Assad did not "take the opportunity to say in public what he said to me in private about his deep regret about the loss of innocent lives and particularly the bus bombing."

As Clinton headed home by way of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Israeli and American officials were also busy recalibrating their messages about progress in the Golan negotiations. To keep the tone positive, Israel's officials said they were encouraged by Assad's use at one point in his press conference of the formulation "full withdrawal for full peace." Clinton, meanwhile, was worried that he might have oversold his accomplishment. In what one of his aides called an effort to "modulate," Clinton began speaking of the possibility of progress, rather than actual progress.

Rabin, who has been at this task for so many years, summed it up best: "This is the essence of the peacemaking process. Be patient." That advice certainly applies to the U.S. as well. Assad looks on the peace process partly as a way to improve his relations with Washington and insists he will negotiate with Israel only through the U.S. The Israelis, though stirred by Clinton's vow to "stand with you now and always," would prefer direct talks. In their absence, Israel welcomes the U.S. as middleman. "There is," Clinton said aboard Air Force One, "a very high level of confidence in the U.S. among all the parties." Secretary of State Warren Christopher is due back in the region in a few weeks for more shuttle diplomacy, and now that Clinton has stepped into the peace process, the parties hope he will stay in.

With reporting by Lisa Beyer/Jerusalem, Michael Duffy with Clinton, Dean Fischer/Amman and Lara Marlowe/Damascus