Mideast Chiefs to Meet on Ailing Peace Accord

The leaders of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians will hold summit talks in Cairo today on fast-crumbling Middle East peace moves after a triple suicide bombing in Israel, officials on all sides said Saturday.

They said Jordan’s King Hussein will fly to Egypt to join previously announced talks between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

The three-way crisis meeting follows Thursday’s attack on a busy Jerusalem promenade that killed seven people, including the three bombers, and wounded 192. It was the second multiple suicide attack in Israel in five weeks.

In Jordan, Minister of State for Information Samir Mutawae said hopes are pinned on U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s first foray into the troubled region this week.

Albright will arrive to find the historic Israeli-Palestinian interim peace accords, which mark their fourth anniversary next week, badly battered.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced after Thursday’s attack that he would not honor a commitment to transfer West Bank land to the Palestinians as long as Arafat refused to meet his obligation to crush “depraved terrorists.”

The Palestinians accused Netanyahu, who reluctantly inherited the peace accords from the Labor Party government he ousted in 1996, of formally trying to bury the peace process.

“The Palestinian leadership calls on the American President Bill Clinton and Mrs. Albright to be aware of Israeli attempts to use the security excuse, which Netanyahu always uses, in order to destroy the entire peace process,” the Palestinian Cabinet said in a statement issued after its weekly meeting Friday.

Israel, which has handed over much of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank to PLO self-rule, is committed to withdraw its troops from more West Bank land in phased pullbacks due to be completed by mid-1998.

The latest bombings deepened a peace crisis sparked by Netanyahu’s groundbreaking on a Jewish settlement in disputed East Jerusalem last March.

In Washington, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat pledged a policy of “zero tolerance” on terrorism but virtually ruled out the mass arrests of militants that Israel has demanded.

A wing of the militant Islamic organization Hamas had claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack.

However, Israel radio on Saturday quoted an unidentified Hamas official as denying responsibility for the explosions. The official said the bombings were done to embarrass the Palestinian Authority, and that Hamas knows who did it. No further details were given.

U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley said Washington does not believe present Palestinian efforts to rein in the militants are sufficient. He said Albright has made it clear that she is looking for “actions on the part of the Palestinian Authority that we haven’t seen.”

Albright will also have to contend with escalating violence in southern Lebanon, the last active Arab-Israeli front.

The United States called for maximum Israeli restraint after 12 Israeli soldiers were killed in a botched commando raid Friday. It was Israel’s costliest intrusion into Lebanon in more than a decade.

Israel tightened its closure of the West Bank and Gaza and reimposed an internal blockade of Palestinian-ruled cities after Thursday’s suicide bombing.

Netanyahu’s Cabinet also said Friday that it would step up its fight against “terrorism.” Palestinians suspect Israel will try to snatch suspected guerrillas in areas under Palestinian control.

Ehud Barak, leader of the opposition Labor Party, blasted the 15 months of peace deadlock under Netanyahu but gave his backing Saturday to Israeli counter-terrorism operations within areas under full Palestinian security rule.

“According to the present agreement, if there is an action that the army needs to do in ‘A’ areas to prevent a specific terror activity . . . it is allowed to,” Barak told Israel radio.

Hawkish Cabinet minister Ariel Sharon said it was unacceptable for Israel to rely on Palestinian Authority aid against “terror.”

“No Israeli government has ever agreed to place its security in the hands of a foreign element. So we’re supposed to place it in the hands of a terrorist organization?” Sharon said on Israel television.