Barak, Arafat to Meet as Pact Deadline Looms
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat will meet this week amid fading hopes for concluding the outline of a peace agreement by the deadline they set, Feb. 13.
“If they don’t meet it, they’ll reach some understanding about how to deal with that problem,” a senior U.S. official said Saturday after a meeting between Arafat and President Clinton here, where both are attending an economic forum.
The statement was the frankest admission yet that U.S. mediators are likely to fall short of their target for a basic understanding about the future of Jerusalem, whether there will be a Palestinian state and other knotty issues.
The Barak-Arafat meeting will be held Thursday or Friday at Erez, a border crossing between Israel and Palestinian-held Gaza, and will focus on the major unresolved issues, said the official, who declined to be identified.
Lower-ranking Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are to hold intensive talks early this week.
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