U.S. fed up with Netanyahu, Palestine expects US initiative to be public

Palestinian government sources said Friday that after US President Bill Clinton testifies on the Monica Lewinsky affair on Monday, he will have more time to spend on international affairs.

"It is conceivable in our view to suggest that right after his internal problems are pushed aside, even temporarily, President Bill Clinton will find himself obliged to deal with the ill-fated US ideas for a second phase withdrawal of Israeli troops in the West Bank," said a senior Palestinian official.

He added that he felt through contacts with American officials that the US Administration was not happy at all with the way Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu turned down the US initiative "even though it was drafted in accordance to ideas presented by Netanyahu himself and without any prior coordination with the PNA."

A leading daily in Israel, meanwhile, said Friday that Netanyahu has tried to contact President Clinton four times over the past few weeks but was turned down. Quoting a senior American source, Maariv daily said that President Clinton "is angry that Netanyahu did not keep his promises about the American initiative, and refuses to agree to an initiative that was actually designed in the spirit of his ideas."

The paper said that President Clinton gave Secretary of State Madeleine Albright a green light to publicize the American peace initiative, and to publicly blame Israel for the failure of the peace process. Netanyahu's spokesman, Aviv Bushinsky, denied the report and said there was never a time when Netanyahu called and Clinton would not talk to him.