Hopes for a breakthrough in the stalled Middle East peace process faded as the US Vice-President ended his Middle East tour yesterday.
Mr Al Gore arrived in Egypt from Israel yesterday morning after late night talks with the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, followed by a surprise two-hour meeting at Ben Gurion airport with the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Look, this is it," he warned the two leaders, according to a senior US official. "You can't afford to let this moment pass. It may not come back again. You have got to open your minds and try to land this one."
He was also quoted by officials as having given both leaders the same message: "You've got to make an effort."
But although Mr Gore, in Israel for the state's 50th anniversary celebrations, tried to smooth the way for success at the talks, Israeli officials dismissed his efforts.
"The vice-president is not here to negotiate," Mr Netanyahu's spokesman, Mr David Bar-Illan said.
Later, he put a further damper on the London talks, saying it would be "utterly impossible" for Israel to accept withdrawal from 13 per cent of the occupied West Bank, the figure put forward by the US in an effort to break the 13month deadlock in peace efforts.
"I think the administration knows our position. It would be utterly impossible for Israel to adhere to a withdrawal of 13 per cent," he said.
Using its oft-invoked excuse of "security needs" to justify its opposition to the proposal, Israel has publicly countered it with an offer of a 9 per cent withdrawal and blamed Palestinian "inflexibility" for the stalemate.
But Mr Arafat, also in Cairo yesterday, has accepted the US proposal. But his plea for the US to publicly pressurise its Israeli allies into accepting it has come to naught, despite the appearance of growing US frustration with the stalemate, as seen last week when the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, said negotiations were "going around in circles".
That the Palestinian and Israeli leaders will hold separate talks with Mrs Albright today is yet another sign of how bad relations between Israel and the Palestinians have become in the 13 months since negotiations stopped over the building of an Israeli settlement on occupied land in Arab East Jerusalem.
The two men have not met for seven months and have no plans to do so in London. "We hope the London meeting will be a success because we fear what will happen after that," President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt warned.