Annan toils to arrange Middle East summit

1:00 PM

JERUSALEM - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan worked into the early hours this morning trying to arrange a summit to halt the explosion of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat met his advisors in Gaza to weigh his options after meeting Annan on the 16th consecutive day of battles between Palestinian and Israeli troops.

Annan said after a late-night meeting on Friday with Arafat that he expected a summit within 48 hours, involving Israel, Palestinians, the United States, Egypt and the United Nations.

He said that Arafat was to give him an answer, which he predicted would be positive, by telephone during the night.

"I am quite confident that a ceasefire can be achieved and a summit can go ahead," Annan told reporters before flying to Tel Aviv to brief Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on the meeting.

Egypt's government press centre reported that Annan would meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday to discuss how to bring about an end to the bloody clashes.

But Nabil Abu Rdainah, an adviser to Arafat, played down the prospects for a Middle East summit.

"It's too early to talk about convening a summit since the conditions are not fulfilled yet in spite of the appreciated international efforts," he told reporters on Friday night.

Diplomats said the Palestinians were still seeking conditions that Israel has called unacceptable.

Israel's acting foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, said no decision had been taken regarding Israeli participation and that the government did not want a "fiasco" like last week's Barak-Arafat talks in Paris.

As international pressure mounted on Arafat to attend a possible meeting, the United States tried to clear the way for a meeting on Egyptian soil, and dropped its insistence the two sides commit themselves to ending the clashes before they hold a summit.

But White House spokesman Jake Siewert told reporters in Washington "we have not made any decision" on whether to hold the summit.

The United States has vowed that a suicide attack on a U.S. ship in the Yemeni port of Aden on Thursday that killed seven sailors will not stop it trying to broker a Middle East peace.

European Union leaders added their voice to appeals for an emergency gathering to end the violence and rescue the shattered peace process.

Diplomats said that Palestinian conditions for participation in the talks include withdrawal of Israeli tanks from the West Bank, reopening Palestinian territories, and agreeing to an international commission of inquiry into the violence.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said on Israeli television he would not pay Arafat a price for attending a summit. "We are not ready to pave the way there with prizes for violence... There can be no reward for violence," he said.

He added that he had asked Ariel Sharon, a leading opponent of peace deals and the man blamed by Palestinians for provoking the current violence with his September 28 visit to a Jerusalem shrine, to join him in a "national emergency government".

Sharon has not responded.

The Israelis accuse Arafat of failing to order an end to Palestinian stone-throwing and gun attacks which Israeli troops have matched with often deadly force.

In the latest unrest, soldiers shot dead a 21-year-old Palestinian in the divided West Bank city of Hebron, where protesters chanted: "Bomb Tel Aviv."

Troops wounded dozens in clashes in Hebron, Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem and the West Bank village of Hizma. But the overall level of violence on Friday was lower than on Thursday.

At least 98 people, all but seven of them Palestinians or Israeli Arabs, have been killed since the violence began.

Israeli police tightened security around Jerusalem's Old City before Friday Muslim prayers, barring Palestinians under 45 from al-Aqsa mosque and strengthening the closure of the West Bank and Gaza in a bid to reduce the risk of confrontations.

In the West Bank town of Ramallah and in Gaza, supporters of the militant Islamic Hamas movement rampaged through the streets.

Hamas, which has been behind suicide bombings that have killed dozens of Israelis, had called for "marches of rage" after Israeli helicopters on Thursday struck Palestinian targets to avenge the lynching of two of its soldiers.

Arafat said on Friday that he had ordered an inquiry into the killings, but did not confirm an assertion by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in Tel Aviv that he had ordered the arrests of some of those responsible.

- REUTERS

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