
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 19, 1994                   TAG: 9411170056
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON TO VISIT MIDEAST

President Clinton will address the Israeli and Jordanian parliaments and visit American troops in Kuwait on a Mideast trip to see the signing of a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. He may also meet with the presidents of Egypt and Syria.

He would be the first U.S. president since Richard Nixon 20 years ago to travel so extensively in the region, though Jimmy Carter in 1978 visited Israel and Egypt.

Going to Cairo, even for a few hours, would be a way to thank Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, an Arab middleman for both the Bush and Clinton administrations.

Going to Syria would be more risky diplomacy. President Hafez Assad is holding firm on his demand that Israel relinquish every inch of the strategic Golan Heights, and a Clinton visit to Damascus would accentuate the negotiating track on which the administration has not had much luck.

The arrangement with Jordan calls for Israel to return most of the 152 square miles it seized in 1948, but allows Israel to lease areas now having Israeli settlements or farms. Assad said Tuesday that Syria would never agree to such a lease-back plan. Israel seized the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war, and Syria insists it must be returned in full.

``It is apostasy for anyone to speak of a nation leasing its land,'' Assad said at a news conference in Cairo. ``There will be no peace as long as the land is not returned fully.''

Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat condemned the Israel-Jordan accord Tuesday as an ``outrageous infringement'' of the PLO's peace agreement with Israel and a betrayal of Palestinian interests.

Arafat said he was outraged that Jordanian negotiators did not consult the PLO before the accord was initialed Monday. He was especially upset by a provision giving Jordan a ``special role'' in the disputed city of Jerusalem. ``This is an outrageous infringement of the declaration of principles between the PLO and Israel ... in regards to Jerusalem, the holy Islamic and Christian shrines,'' Arafat said.

by CNB