As Israel and Syria yesterday overcame the mini-crisis that had marred the start of their latest round of peace talks, President Clinton let slip that the ambitious goal of the negotiations was to achieve a treaty within the next three to four months.
Israeli and Syrian officials have been hinting broadly for several weeks that a treaty is fairly close, but it was the US President - in remarks at the White House before he set out to join the negotiators at their Shepherdstown, West Virginia, retreat yesterday - who really let the cat out of the bag.
The United States, he said, was "desperate" to see comprehensive peace in the Middle East, and "in the next three to four months we have an unparalleled opportunity that we have to seize".
All the parties to the current talks, it appears, share this sense of urgency: Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, wants to wrap up an agreement before internal Israeli opposition to the requisite withdrawal from the Golan Heights becomes too strong.
President Clinton needs to close a deal to end his second term on a triumphant note. And President Hafez al-Assad of Syria, said by some reports to be now too ill to work for more than a few hours a day, presumably feels the pressure of his own mortality.
Despite that shared enthusiasm for rapid progress, the talks themselves did not begin on Monday as scheduled because of an argument about what would be discussed first. But that dispute was resolved yesterday, with Israel claiming a tactical victory.
Israel, said aides to Mr Barak, had successfully insisted that the negotiating agenda initially focus on aspects of normalised trade, tourism and diplomatic relations, and security arrangements to protect Israel from surprise Syrian attack. The Syrians, by contrast, had wanted to begin with a debate on where the disputed international border should run.
In fact, the "victory" is somewhat hollow. Committees are also being set up to begin discussing border demarcation in the next day or so, and the Syrians, should they choose, will thus be able to slow the progress on the other aspects of a treaty and seek to accelerate the negotiations over the border issue.
Away from the Shepherdstown spotlight, meanwhile, Israel and its other negotiating partner, the Palestinian Authority, finally reached agreement yesterday on the next hand-overs of occupied territory. Today and tomorrow Israel is to pull its troops out of 5 per cent of the West Bank, a move that will necessitate the dismantling of six army bases.
Two weeks from now, it was also agreed, Israel will hand over another 6 per cent slice of the territory to Palestinian control. Right-wing opposition parties claim that this withdrawal will include particularly sensitive territory around Jerusalem.
There have also been reports here in recent days of substantial progress on the vexed issue of Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want at least partial sovereignty.
But Mr Oded Eran, who heads the Israeli team negotiating with the Palestinians, said last night that no decision had yet been taken on which territory would be included in the 6 per cent hand-over.
AFP adds: Israel's controversial President Ezer Weizman, under fire for accepting half-a-million dollars from a French tycoon and for overstepping the boundaries of his largely ceremonial role, has no plans to resign, his office said yesterday.
Mr Weizman (76) is under investigation following revelations by a journalist last week that he received $453,000 from Mr Edouard Sarusi before he became president in 1993.
The President's office has not denied he received the money, but his aides insist he did nothing wrong in accepting it, saying it was a gift from a family friend.