Israeli envoy in last-gasp bid

JERUSALEM - United States President Bill Clinton's Middle East peace drive took another last-minute turn yesterday with the arrival in Washington of an Israeli envoy for talks that could set a course for further negotiations on an accord.

Israel said Gilead Sher, chief of staff in the office of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, would focus in his meetings in the State Department only on how to end three weeks of Israeli-Palestinian violence in which 355 people have been killed.

But US officials said he also would discuss Clinton's peace proposals, accepted with reservations by both Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

A senior Palestinian official said the US would hand Sher 15 points of reservation that Palestinians gave Clinton, and Israel would have to decide if it wanted to continue peace negotiations.

A decision would then be made on whether to dispatch a Palestinian peacemaking delegation to Washington.

Clinton's proposals deal with issues at the core of 52 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as the future of Jerusalem, the fate of Jewish settlements and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said after a meeting of nine Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo that the forum wanted the Palestinians to pursue negotiations.

But the group also reaffirmed core demands that Israel has rejected, such as the right of return of Palestinian refugees to the Jewish state and Palestinian sovereignty over Israeli-annexed Arab East Jerusalem and its holy sites.

- REUTERS

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