Unprecedented Four-Way Mideast Summit Set : Diplomacy: Leaders of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the PLO meet today in bid to revive negotiations.

The leaders of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians will hold an unprecedented four-way summit in Cairo today in an effort to rescue foundering Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

The quartet of leaders “will make a real attempt to create a coalition for peace and not let the coalition against peace stop it,” Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told reporters in Cairo, where he held talks Wednesday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Amir Moussa.

A Palestinian spokesman confirmed Wednesday that Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat will attend the Cairo summit.

“It is a conference of the peacemakers,” said Nabil abu Rudaineh. “We are facing a crisis between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the major issue tomorrow will be how to get out of this crisis and back to the negotiating table.”

Moussa said Syrian President Hafez Assad, whose three-year negotiations with Israel are at an impasse, was not invited to the meeting.

“We don’t want to embarrass him,” Moussa said.

In Damascus, however, Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh announced that the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Walid Moualem, will return to Washington from Damascus this week to resume negotiations with Israeli Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich.

Both Israeli and Palestinian analysts welcomed today’s meeting as essential to restoring the credibility of peace negotiations. Public opinion polls now show that the negotiations are opposed by majorities of Israelis and Palestinians.

“The peace process is in a deep low. Israeli-Egyptian relations are in a deep low. So it is a very important thing that, for the first time, the leaders of this area decide that the way to deal with this situation is to meet and to talk about it,” said Danny Shek, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Shek said there is no formal agenda for the meeting.

“The issue at this particular moment is to save the peace process from destruction,” said Prof. Shlomo Ben Ami, head of the Center for International Studies at Tel Aviv University and a former Israeli ambassador.

Ben Ami said he was particularly encouraged by the fact that Jordan’s King Hussein will participate in the talks.

“This is the first time since the process began that we will see King Hussein sitting together with Arafat and Rabin,” Ben Ami said. “This is very important, when you consider that the king initially felt betrayed when the Palestinians signed a peace treaty with Israel, and that Jordan’s later peace treaty with Israel was seen almost as a move directed against the Palestinians. Now, the triangle (of Hussein, Arafat and Rabin) meets, and this is very positive.”

Israel has held no peace talks with the Palestinians since two Islamic militants killed themselves and 21 Israelis in a suicide bombing Jan. 22 at Beit Lid, in northern Israel.

Since that bombing, public support among Israelis for continuing negotiations with the Palestinians has plunged, while Palestinian public-opinion polls show increased support among Palestinians for carrying out “military attacks” inside Israel.

The night of the bombing, Israel closed off the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an action that continues to keep about 70,000 Palestinian workers from going to their jobs inside Israel.

Palestinian officials say the closure is exacerbating an already disastrous economic situation in Gaza.

On Sunday, the Cabinet announced that Gaza will remain closed off from Israel until Arafat takes unspecified steps to halt attacks on Israelis. Peres bluntly blamed Arafat’s failure to control extremist elements in the Gaza Strip for the hiatus in the talks.

After returning to Israel on Wednesday afternoon, Peres told reporters that talks between Israelis and Palestinians on holding Palestinian elections in Gaza and the West Bank will be held in Cairo next week. He did not say, however, when talks on pulling Israeli troops out of West Bank towns and villages will resume.

Peres could report no progress in the talks he and Moussa held on Israel’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which comes up for renewal in July.

The Egyptians, who are signatories, have threatened to oppose a treaty extension unless Israel agrees to sign. Israel is believed to have a large nuclear arsenal but says only that it will not introduce nuclear weapons into the region.

Israeli sources said the idea for today’s summit was Peres’, and that Mubarak took the lead in pulling it together.

Mubarak traveled last month to Jordan for reconciliation talks with Hussein.

He and the king had been barely on speaking terms since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when Hussein supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein against a U.S.-led coalition that included Egypt and Syria.

Late last month, Arafat and Jordanian Prime Minister Sharif Zayed Shaker signed several Jordanian-Palestinian economic and political cooperation agreements. Those agreements were ratified by Jordan’s Parliament on Wednesday.