Word: oslo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Summit will likely be studied by diplomatic historians for years to come. After nine days of tense negotiations and high drama, Israel and the Palestinians signed an agreement last Friday that will push forward the heretofore stalled implementation of the Oslo Accords. Both sides made significant concessions, including the implementation of points agreed upon at Oslo as well as new ones, and both deserve the commendation of the international community for taking the brave steps necessary for a true and lasting peace...
...taken Israelis and Palestinians 19 months of deadlock, and eight days of non-stop negotiations, to achieve an interim deal that does little more than implement the next "land-for-peace" stage of the Oslo agreement. When -- and if -- Friday's agreements are put into practice, the two sides will still have to negotiate what Oslo called the "final status" issues. These include the impossibly tricky questions of a Palestinian state, Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories and even the future of Jerusalem...
...course the differences on final-status issues looked insurmountable at the time Oslo was signed, which was why the four-year interim was designed -- to give both sides time to learn to trust each other in quid-pro-quo steps before tackling the most difficult hurdle. But, far from building mutual confidence, the last four years have been a disaster. Both sides are girding for confrontation next May, when Yasser Arafat intends to declare a Palestinian state regardless of Israel's objections. Indeed, a cynical view might hold that both sides came to Wye in order to position themselves most...
...peace process is also at a low ebb. "The mood has changed," says TIME West Bank correspondent Jamil Hamad. "The optimism has given way to indifference and anxiety. Don't expect Palestinians to celebrate this agreement, because they doubt whether Netanyahu plans to implement any deal. For the Palestinians, Oslo was the compromise, and now this is the compromise of the compromise...
...sense of the significance of the summit. "The talks aren't even the lead item on the TV news here," says Beyer. "This whole drawn-out high-level summit is inappropriate for the issues at stake here -- they're negotiating over the details of a single clause of the Oslo Agreement, but Washington is treating it with the same sense of drama as if it were a peace treaty between nations at war." But the glacial progress of even such limited negotiations suggests Bill Clinton will have to look elsewhere for that legacy-defining foreign policy achievement...