Israel to accept offer - if Palestinians do

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was prepared to accept United States President Bill Clinton's Middle East peace proposal without changes, on the condition that the Palestinians did too.

But Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said some of the American ideas presented after a five-day round of US-hosted talks last week fell short of proposals that he had already rejected in July at a failed summit at Camp David.

The leaders have been mulling Clinton's proposed framework for final status negotiations in hopes of resuming peace talks deadlocked since July and crippled by three months of violence.

"The natural tendency is of course to want a lot of changes. If the other side agrees to accept the [ideas] as they are, then we too will need to accept them," Barak said.

Officials on both sides have said Clinton's proposal after last week's talks in Washington included compromises on the sovereignty of Arab East Jerusalem, territorial transfers and Palestinian refugees' right to return to Israel.

Arafat discussed the ideas yesterday in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "[The ideas] demand deep study, as some of the positions were much less than what was proposed at Camp David," Arafat said in Gaza City.

The Camp David talks reportedly floundered when Arafat rejected US-Israeli ideas that did not give Palestinians sovereignty over a shrine sacred to Muslims and Jews as well as most of East Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel in 1967 in a move not recognised by the world.

The two sides have until tomorrow to tell Clinton, who wants to clinch a Middle East peace deal before leaving office on January 20, if his proposals are an acceptable basis for continuing negotiations. Positive responses could lead to Clinton holding separate talks with Barak and Arafat, as well as a summit.

Meanwhile, Israel's Deputy Defence Minister, Ephraim Sneh, said Israel was putting up an alarmed fence along 70km of the June 1967 war ceasefire line with the West Bank.

Sneh said the fence, already under construction, would cost around 100 million shekels ($57.74 million) and was to prevent "terrorist infiltrations."

- REUTERS

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