The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, said yesterday he would meet President Clinton tomorrow without a specific figure on the size of further Israeli troop withdrawals in the West Bank.
"It is clear that if we had set a number, it would have elicited immediate public responses from the Palestinians and perhaps from the Americans. That would not have served my aims," Mr Netanyahu told reporters after the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
"I prefer private consultations with President Clinton and to explain to him our limitations and our flexibility . . . and to try to work out with him the best way to move the [peace] process forward," he said.
Washington wants Israel to carry out a "credible and significant' West Bank pullback, the second of three promised in its 1995 interim peace deal with the PLO, and to call a "time-out" to Jewish settlement activity.
An Israeli cabinet communique said yesterday an unspecified "ceiling" would be set only after Mr Netanyahu returned from his meeting with Mr Clinton. The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, will hold his own White House talks with Mr Clinton on Thursday.