Albright awaits Israel’s reply

“We would like to see a credible further redeployment,” she said at a joint news conference here with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. “We want to make sure there is a combination of quality and quantity.”

In the 1993 and 1995 Oslo accords, Israel agreed to redeploy its troops in the West Bank to give Arafat’s Palestinian authority control over an increasing spread of land. The accords leave it to Israel to decide how much ground to yield. Last March the Israeli Cabinet voted in favor of a 9 per cent pullback, while the Palestinians have been agitating for far more, up to 60 per cent of the West Bank. Albright was aiming for something in between. But, on Friday, in Paris, Netanyahu rebuffed Albright on the specifics of another withdrawal. And on Saturday night, after she returned to Paris, a second meeting with Netanyahu appeared to have had similar results.

An Israeli official on condition of anonymity, said the PM again brought “no maps, no percentages” of territory to be evacuated.