Power Broker Guards Anonymity

• An Israeli diplomat keeps popping up at major world summits with no mention of his name.

Uri Savir, former director general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was reportedly an unannounced member of the Israeli delegation at the recent Camp David Middle East peace summit.

Savir, Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians from 1993 to 1996, was also an unidentified participant at the Bilderberg gathering in June at Chateau du Lac in Genval, near Brussels, Bel gium.

When the secretive cabal of global financiers and power brokers known as Bilderberg convened at Chateau du Lac, The SPOTLIGHT was there, as usual (see SPOTLIGHT, June 18). This year The SPOTLIGHT obtained photos of the attendees as they arrived, including Savir.

Although Bilderberg meetings are highly secretive and held behind closed doors, a list of attendees was provided by a source in the European Union. Bilderberg staff, following extensive coverage in the Flemish language newspaper, De Morgen, grudgingly released a similar list on the final day of the meeting. Strangely enough, Savir's name is not on either list.

Savir, chief negotiator of the Oslo agreements made with the Palestinians in 1993, spoke at the University of Michigan in November 1998 and said, "We must mutually accept each other. Change can only come from true recognition of each other and mutual understanding."

Savir wrote a book called The Process: 1,100 Days that Changed the Middle East in which he says that the interim negotiating team that he headed was made up of military men who were the most qualified to negotiate and draw up national borders and security zones. In the book he writes that the Israeli team maintained total control of the talks at all times, and never compromised on Israeli interests.

Some Middle East experts allege that Savir is himself an officer in Shin Bet, the Israeli counter-intelligence and internal security service.

As a result of the bilateral cooperation, Savir said that there would be a Palestinian state by 1999.

However, in his book the Israeli team is shown to have been considering Palestinian "political" and not "national" rights.

Savir is also a proponent of creating a regional development bank for the Middle East.