Barak, left, shakes hands with Mubarak after talks aimed at furthering the Mideast peace process

January 30, 2000
Web posted at: 9:19 p.m. EST (0219 GMT)

In this story: Deadline nears for outline of peace Barak asks Egypt for help Is Barak's credibility hurt by scandal? RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

JERUSALEM -- As a deadline nears for an outline of a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, a top Israeli official has suggested that Jerusalem could be shared with the Palestinians.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, who often speaks for Prime Minister Ehud Barak, said Sunday that Jerusalem's municipal boundaries could be expanded to accommodate Palestinian aspirations for a presence in the city.

"I don't want to commit," Sneh told Israel television. He immediately added, however, that "Teddy Kollek wrote an article once on this, and he called it 'sharing united Jerusalem.'" Kollek was a longtime mayor of the city.

Asked where he would expand the borders, Sneh said eastward.

The Likud opposition party characterized the comments as capitulation.

"In the name of God, what has become of us?" said Michael Eitan, a Likud legislator who appeared on the same program as Sneh. "A deputy defense minister of Israel is dividing Jerusalem before we even reached the negotiations."

Israel captured the traditionally Arab eastern part of Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Israeli governments have pledged never to divide the city. Palestinians claim the eastern part of the city as their capital.

Deadline nears for outline of peace

Meanwhile on Sunday, the brokers of peace between Israel and the Palestinians met in Switzerland, Egypt, Russia and a secret West Bank location as a February 13 deadline approaches for an outline of a final peace treaty.

VIDEO CNN's Jerrold Kessel reveals how a campaign funding scandal may cost Israeli leader Ehud Barak his credibility and hurt peace talks. (January 30) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K     MESSAGE BOARD Mideast peace     INTERACTIVE MAP Golan Heights: A tug of war for peace

In Davos, Switzerland, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat at the World Economic Forum on Sunday to discuss ways to move the Middle East peace process forward.

Their meeting followed a Saturday session in Davos between Arafat and U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Neither Arafat nor Albright spoke after their discussion but the head of the Palestinian delegation in talks with Israel, Nabil Shaath, said it had been constructive.

"I think there is a feeling that the United States really is quite engaged, quite interested in continuing to be engaged, to push the process forward," Shaath told reporters.

After leaving Davos Sunday evening, Albright was traveling to Moscow for a three-day visit to co-chair the first multilateral Middle East conference in more than three years with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

The talks begin Tuesday in Russia, but Syria and Lebanon are staying away, saying that there is no point in working on broader, regional issues until progress has been made on the peace tracks themselves.

Barak asks Egypt for help

In 1979, Egypt became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Since then, it has tried to carve itself a role as a regional peacemaker.

Barak traveled to Egypt on Sunday and talked with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak about Israel's peace efforts with both the Palestinians and Syria.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Mubarak, Barak said there should be no preconditions to further Israeli-Syrian peace talks.

"Our position is very clear, we cannot convey a political commitment from Israel to Syria before the negotiations even started," Barak said.

The Syria-Israeli talks are stalled over Syria's demand for an Israeli commitment on returning the Golan Heights before discussing normalization of relations.

The toughest issues between Israel and the Palestinians arethe issue of Palestinian refugees, the nature of an independent Palestinian state, and the status of Jerusalem.

Barak's policy adviser, Danny Yatom, said Sunday that many hurdles remained, and played down ramifications of missing the February 13 deadline for work on the treaty with the Palestinians.

"Even if we don't meet the date at hand and we need another month -- possibly more or possibly less -- it's not such a horrible thing," he told army radio.

Palestinian chief negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo said the Palestinians might be willing to accept a short extension of the deadline, but only if real progress were being made in the talks.

"If Israel shows seriousness in these negotiations, then we can postpone the framework deadline by a short period of time," Abed Rabbo said.

Little progress has been made since these negotiations began amid much fanfare in November. The Palestinians have accused Israel of dragging its feet, especially in December when Israel was briefly in peace talks with Syria after a four-year break.

On Thursday, Barak meets with Arafat at the Erez Junction in the Gaza Strip, and next week he travels to Jordan to meet King Abdullah II.

"The peace process is something this government promised to make progress on," Yatom told Israel army radio on Sunday. "Prime Minister Barak has dedicated long hours, days and nights to it."

Is Barak's credibility hurt by scandal?

Israeli police recently launched an investigation into the fund-raising activities of Barak's One Israel coalition. A comptroller's report said the coalition broke the law by using non-profit organizations to gather money.

The report said One Israel set up the organizations tofunnel large contributions from international donors to Barak'ssuccessful campaign against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Suchcampaign contributions are illegal under Israeli campaign financing law.

Knesset member Reuven Rivlin says the Israeli prime minister has lost credibility

Some political analysts say the investigation is casting a shadow over Barak, and his peacemaking efforts.

"If Mr. Barak is seen as accelerating the peace process there will be many people who will accuse him of doing so because of his situation with the investigation," said political analyst Chemi Shalev. "From that point of view, his credibility has been damaged."

Barak's critics agree with the analysis.

"The prime minister of Israel lost a lot of credibility and we really don't think that he has the permission now and the charter from the people to go ahead to decide upon the future of Israel," said Ryeven Rivlin, a Knesset member with the rival Likud Party.

Other observers of Middle East politics say that if Barak makes breakthroughs in the peace process, it could relegate the current attention on the campaign funds scandal to the back burner.

Correspondent Jerrold Kessel, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.