Middle East peace hopes turn to Washington

JERUSALEM - Middle East peacemaking hopes have shifted to Washington after Palestinian and Israeli leaders said they might visit the United States soon for talks.

In Tel Aviv, hundreds of thousands of Israelis gathered yesterday to mark the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, killed by a right-wing Jew opposed to his trading of land for peace with the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told the rally he could go to Washington to try to bring peace.

He also called on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to return to the search for a "peace of the brave."

An adviser to Arafat said US President Bill Clinton had telephoned Arafat yesterday to invite him to the White House on Friday, two days after the US presidential election.

Officials said Arafat was likely to accept - a step that would open the way for Prime Minister Ehud Barak also to meet Clinton.



The new Middle East peace effort gave fresh hope to ending more than a month of clashes in which at least 171 people, almost all Palestinians, have been killed.

Unrest appeared to wane yesterday afternoon with no confirmed deaths.

The lull came two days after a Jerusalem car bomb killed two Israelis. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

Evoking the legacy of Rabin during the Tel Aviv rally, Barak called publicly on Arafat to return to the search for a "peace of the brave," forged with a handshake on the White House lawn in September 1993 to seal the Oslo interim peace accords.

"You who shook the hand of Yitzhak Rabin ... it is in your hands to stop the violence and end the bloodshed," Barak said.



A truce struck between Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres on Thursday appeared to be holding despite the continued unrest and Palestinian charges of Israeli hostility.



Arafat again accused Barak yesterday of failing to comply with undertakings to lift a closure on the Palestinian territories and reopen Palestinian-ruled Gaza airport.

The head of Barak's office, Gilead Sher, told Israel's Channel Two television that he was hopeful the truce deal would hold.

Arafat's deal with Peres was intended to revive a truce Clinton had brokered at an emergency summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

That accord, reached on October 17, quickly collapsed.

It provided for a halt to violence and an examination of its causes with a view to resuming talks on a final peace deal.

The leader of Arafat's Fatah faction in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouthi, meanwhile urged Palestinians to take their uprising, or Intifada, against Israel "into every street and every Jewish settlement" on occupied land.

Palestinian medical sources said at least 23 Palestinians were wounded on Saturday in clashes at several flashpoints in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - including a 14-year-old girl.

- REUTERS

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