Clinton risks Israel's anger to woo US Arabs rael to attend talks

AS President Clinton's special envoy to the Middle East arrived in Israel to prod prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu into meeting Monday's deadline, Mr Clinton was ratcheting up the pressure from Washington.

After the inconclusive London talks earlier in the week, the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, had threatened that if Mr Netanyahu would not cede land to the Palestinians, Washington could re-examine its whole Middle East policy. In appeals and veiled threats, Mr Clinton has reinforced the message that if there is no agreement, the future of the Oslo accords is question.

Over 48 hours, Mr Clinton illustrated what that could mean. On Thursday night he became the first serving President to address a gathering of Arab-Americans. To an ecstatic welcome, Mr Clinton told a dinner attended by more than 750 members of the US Arab community what was at stake.

"In almost every area of human endeavour, opportunities do not last forever," he said. "They must be seized, and I hope this one will be ... we have got to get this done." Mr Clinton's words were clearly addressed more to Israelis than Palestinians, as the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has already accepted the terms for Monday's proposed meeting in Washington.

Earlier that day it became known Hillary Clinton had spoken with approval of Palestinian statehood. She told a US-sponsored youth camp in Switzerland by satellite that "it will be in the long-term interests of the Middle East for Palestine to be a state."

A flurry of qualifications followed: it was her "personal view", her spokeswoman, Marsha Berry, said, "and US policy is unchanged". "She was not reflecting any administration policy," said the White House spokesman, Mike McCurry. He denied it was "part of a calculated strategy".

But Mrs Clinton is no novice in foreign affairs (she has acted as unofficial presidential envoy on numerous occasions) and yields little to her husband in political acumen. And few were deceived. While Jewish American groups condemned her remarks, the President of the Arab-American Institute in Washington, James Zogby, congratulated her on "helping to break the taboo".

Mr Clinton, for his part, used each and every public appearance to chivy Mr Netanyahu into making the concession on land that would make the planned talks in Washington on Monday worthwhile. He denied Israel was facing an ultimatum: "What we are trying to do is to get the parties over a hurdle so.... we can stay on the timetable established a few years ago by both the Palestinians and the Israelis to finish the whole thing by this month next year," he said.

Responding to cries of foul from sections of Congress, where the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives had accused Mr Clinton of siding with the Palestinians and "bullying" Israel, he said: "There is no way in the world I could impose an agreement on them or dictate their security to them". If Mr Clinton had to tread warily with Congress, he hardly had to apologise to the Jewish lobby outside Congress. Divided about Mr Netanyahu's policy, American Jews were largely silent, and some Jewish leaders said that they continued to support US policy.