More shooting, more rocks, more warnings

JERUSALEM - An unidentified attacker shot an Israeli embassy employee in the leg in Jordan yesterday in an assault that added to fears that Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed could trigger violence in Arab countries in the Middle East.

Nightly gun battles raged on in the West Bank and Gaza after a day in which soldiers shot dead two Palestinians who took part in rock-throwing protests.

The deaths raised to 297 the number of people, mainly Palestinians, killed in the two-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak yesterday echoed a denial by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat of secret peace talks between the warring sides.

"There are contacts all the time but there are no negotiations," Barak said in a speech. "We have to wait until the violence starts to decrease."

In the second such attack in Amman in just over two weeks, Israeli embassy employee Shlomo Ratsabi was slightly wounded in the leg by shots fired at his car as he and his wife left a supermarket.

Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nation's special Middle East envoy, called on Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks urgently to avert the danger of a regional war.

"The situation as it is now is not tenable," he said. "It may continue the way it is right now for a few more weeks ... It could deteriorate sharply, dramatically and tragically."

"The only way to save the situation is for the parties to return quickly to the negotiating table and make the painful compromises they have to."

- REUTERS

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