President Clinton intervened in the Shepherdstown, West Virginia, peace talks for the fourth time this week, meeting the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, and the Syrian Foreign Minister, Mr Farouq a-Sharaa, last night. He presented the participants with a document designed to jump start the talks.
The aim is a resumption of negotiations on all the key areas of dispute: border demarcation, security arrangements, water allocation and the modalities of normalised relations. The talks have stalled over Israel's refusal to begin discussing how much of the Golan Heights it is prepared to relinquish to Syria until it makes progress on the security arrangements - scope of demilitarised zones, location of early warning stations - which it regards as critical to any territorial handover.