Israel and the Palestinians achieved more during two weeks of peace talks at Camp David than in the previous seven years of negotiations, a senior Palestinian negotiator said yesterday.
Mr Nabil Shaath, a Palestinian cabinet minister, said he believed the two sides could still sign an agreement to end 52 years of conflict by the September 13th deadline they have imposed.
He said the Palestinians had been willing to make territorial swaps with Israel but the failure to agree over the future of Jerusalem and the return of refugees had prevented a deal being reached at the summit.
"We did not do in the last seven years what was done in the two weeks in Camp David as regards a permanent settlement," Mr Shaath said in his office in Gaza, territory seized by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war.
Asked if a peace deal was possible by September 13th, he said: "I think so. I think the Israelis have moved and what really remains, between what we moved and what they moved, is not too far away from an agreement."
The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, and the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, gave up seeking an agreement at Camp David on July 25th after 15 days together, but negotiators have since continued the peace talks at a lower level.
Despite the difficulties over Jerusalem, including Israel's reluctance to give the Palestinians sovereignty over the Muslim holy site of al-Haram al-Sharif in the east of the city, Mr Shaath said the issue could yet be solved by September 13th.
"I don't think it's unsolvable. The Israelis, I think, misunderstood us at the beginning. They thought all we needed was a symbolic sovereignty - and that doesn't work," he said. "They can't sell Arafat a huge compound with a Palestinian flag to be the alternative to sovereignty over East Jerusalem."
He said an Israeli proposal of limited Palestinian authority over some areas dotted across the city would have created a mosaic of Israeli and Palestinian-controlled regions which would not have worked in practice.
"There's a serious problem that whatever they finally suggested cannot be governed," he said.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, sought the Vatican's views on the fate of Jerusalem yesterday.
Ms Albright met Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran but did not have an audience with Pope John Paul, who renewed his appeal during the 15-day Israeli-Palestinian talks at Camp David for an internationally guaranteed "special statute" to safeguard the city's sacred character.