Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir clashed Thursday with Arab delegates over their demand for the return of land captured by Israel and where the next round of Middle East peace talks should be held.
On the second day of the historic Madrid gathering, representatives of Jordan and the Palestinians took to the podium and demanded an end to Israeli settlement-building and a return of Arab territory. In addition, Lebanon called on Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon."We are willing to live side by side on the land," the chief Palestinian negotiator, Haidar Abdul-Shafi, told the delegates. But "the settlements must stop now," he said.
Abdul-Shafi formally accepted some period of limited Palestinian self-rule in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, but he emphasized this should lead to an independent state for the Palestinians, something Israel rejects.
The Madrid talks so far have involved speeches staking out long-held positions rather than actual negotiations. Those are to follow the ceremonial opening, but the site is in serious dispute.
Israel insists they take place in the Middle East, and the Arabs demand they be held on neutral ground, preferably Madrid.
The dispute over the site of the next round of talks as well as a disagreement over whether the United States and the Soviet Union would be present poses a major problem for Secretary of State James A. Baker III in his efforts to keep the peace process alive after this week.
In his address, Shamir said the land-for-peace formula that the Arabs seek should not be the focus of negotiations.
"The issue is not territory but our existence," he told the delegates. Talks focusing primarily on trading land for peace would be "the quickest way to an impasse," he said.
Shamir also restated Israel's claim to Jerusalem, which the Palestinians also claim as their capital.
"If we can't talk about Jerusalem, if we can't talk about withdrawal, what on earth are we doing here?" an exasperated-sounding Jordanian foreign minister, Kamel Abu Jaber, demanded at a news conference after the morning session.
In the ornate conference room at Spain's Royal Palace, under tableaus of angels and glittering chandeliers, the atmosphere was solemn and attentive.
No Arabs were seen applauding Shamir's 30-minute address. A few Israelis applauded the Jordanian address, but Shamir was not among them.
Abdul-Shafi's closing remark - a 1974 quote from Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat - drew prolonged applause from the delegates. "Let not the olive branch fall from my hand," he said.
The PLO was banned from official participation in the talks because Israel regards it as a terrorist organization and refuses to deal with it. But it has wielded considerable behind-the-scenes clout. Palestinians said the PLO helped prepare Abdul-Shafi's speech.
Abu Jaber, who spoke for the Jordanians, opened his remarks with an Arabic blessing; Shamir's first word was "shalom" - the Hebrew greeting that also means "peace." Both then went on to speak in English.
In his address, Shamir challenged the Arabs to drop their resistance to holding face-to-face talks between Israel and Arab delegations - the conference's planned next phase - in the Middle East. The Arab states have resisted going to Israel because it would amount to de facto recognition of the Jewish state.
"We invite our partners to this process to come to Israel for the first round of talks. On our part, we are ready to go to Jordan, to Lebanon and to Syria for the same purpose," Shamir said. "There is no better way to make peace than to talk in each other's home."
"The momentum in Madrid is good, the spirit in Madrid is good, and we should keep it here," retorted Abu Jaber.
In addition to disagreeing over venue, Israel is demanding that Syria meet with its delegation alone in the next phase - without the U.S. and Soviet presence that the Syrians have set as a condition.
If Syria insists on that condition, "we will not have bilateral negotiations, and there will not be any continuation and there won't be any practical results," Shamir told public television's "MacNeil-Lehrer Report" on Wednesday night.
The Arabs demand total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, the Golan Heights and east Jerusalem - all captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.
Both sides spoke warmly of prospects for peace, but both firmly staked their conflicting claims. Like Shamir, and Jordanians and Palestinians marshaled history for their arguments.
The state of Palestine "must be born on the land of Palestine to redeem the injustice and destruction of its historical reality and to free the people of Palestine from the shackles of victimization," said Abdul-Shafi.
On Wednesday, the delegates made history just by sitting across from each other, although the atmosphere was chilly.