Arafat, Barak OK Summit to Discuss Ending Violence

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat agreed Saturday to attend a U.S.-sponsored summit in Egypt to try to bring an end to more than two weeks of deadly violence that has shattered Middle East peace prospects and threatened regional stability.

President Clinton, who had been working for more than a week to set up face-to-face talks between the two leaders, said he will attend the meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik on Monday along with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and a senior European Union official.

Clinton said the Israeli and Palestinian leaders had agreed to attend the talks without preconditions, and the announcement was accompanied by a marked reduction in clashes between the two sides and no fatalities--in what was possibly a concerted effort to pave the way for the meeting.

In another apparent step toward easing tensions, the Palestinian Authority sent 15 members of the extremist Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements back to jail after releasing them during last week’s turmoil in an unspoken threat to renew terrorism against Israel.

Nonetheless, Clinton quickly set out to limit expectations for the summit, which will pursue a cease-fire rather than the broader peace agreement that just a few months ago he still believed he could forge before leaving office.

“We should be under no illusions,” the president said in Washington. “The good news is the parties have agreed to meet and the situation appears to be calmer. But the path ahead is difficult. After the terrible events of the past few days, the situation is still quite tense.

“Our central objectives must now be to stop the violence, to restore common safety, to agree on a fact-finding mechanism concerning how this began and how it can be prevented from occurring again and to find a way back to dialogue and negotiations.”

The Palestinians had resisted a meeting with Barak ahead of an Arab League summit to be held in Cairo next Saturday, but Arafat came under intense international pressure after the violence escalated Thursday, when a Palestinian mob lynched two Israeli soldiers and Israel retaliated with missile attacks on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Israeli-Palestinian violence has fueled Islamic fundamentalist-driven demonstrations in Egypt and Jordan, which have peace agreements with Israel, and might have provoked attacks on U.S. and British targets in the region.

Meanwhile, a Saudi Arabian airliner flying from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, to London was hijacked to Baghdad Saturday night with a Saudi prince and about 90 Britons on board. The hijackers were later arrested and the passengers and crew freed.

Neither the identity of the hijackers nor their motive was immediately clear. Saudi Arabia is the principal U.S. ally in the region and served as the main base for U.S. troops during the 1991 Persian Gulf War against Iraq.

On Thursday, a suspected suicide bomb attack on a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden killed 17 sailors. The following day, a bomb exploded at the British Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah guerrillas are holding three Israeli soldiers whom they captured on Israel’s northern border Oct. 7. Negotiations are underway, but Israel has threatened to retaliate against Lebanon and its de facto rulers in Syria if the soldiers are not released.

U.S., European and U.N. diplomats have been working feverishly to try to calm the Israeli-Palestinian violence and begin stabilizing the region.

As soon as they agreed to attend, both sides immediately laid out the demands they will take to the negotiating table.

Israel blamed the Palestinians for initiating the clashes and insisted that the Palestinian media cease inciting violence. The Israeli government demanded that the Palestinian Authority disarm militias organized by Arafat’s Fatah movement and jail members of the radical Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were let out of prison in recent days.

Palestinian police rearrested one Hamas leader in Gaza and more then a dozen of the 35 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who had been released in the West Bank city of Nablus. The groups oppose peacemaking with Israel and are responsible for earlier bombing campaigns against the Jewish state.

Hamas militants also were part of a crowd of Islamic demonstrators in Gaza that on Friday burned three shops and a hotel that sells alcoholic beverages.

The Palestinian Authority says the widespread riots against Israeli soldiers were triggered by right-wing Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon’s Sept. 28 visit to Jerusalem’s most contested holy site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al Sharif, and that Israel has responded with excessive force.

On Saturday, Palestinian officials demanded that Israel “cease all military aggression against Palestinian positions,” withdraw its troops in the West Bank and Gaza to positions held before the current wave of violence and allow Palestinians freedom of movement.

Israeli officials declined to say whether they would take any of those steps ahead of the summit.

Arafat’s key demand--and the one that caused a breakdown in talks mediated by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Paris 11 days ago--is for an international commission of inquiry to investigate the violence and the high Palestinian death toll.

Israel has said it would agree to a U.S.-led investigation, but again on Saturday it rejected the idea of an international inquiry.

“We only accept a fact-finding mission,” Israeli government spokesman Nachman Shai said.

The Palestinians had wanted a cease-fire to be in place ahead of a summit to discuss ways of reviving peace negotiations. But Shai emphasized that the prime minister would be going to Sharm el Sheik strictly to negotiate a cease-fire.

“There is no room from the Israeli point of view for any diplomatic negotiation in the upcoming summit. This negotiation will take place in the future when there is no violence,” he said.

Shai added that Barak’s ongoing discussions to form a coalition government with Sharon’s Likud Party preclude negotiations with Arafat aimed at a final peace agreement. Sharon opposes the 1993 Oslo peace accords that provided the framework for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and disagrees with some of the concessions that Barak has indicated he is willing to make.

Sharon said he welcomed the summit “if it will succeed in ending the bloodshed,” but he did not support renewed peace talks.

On the other side, Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin urged Arafat to boycott the summit, and thousands of Palestinians in Gaza demonstrated against the meeting, insisting that it is designed to put down the Palestinian uprising without producing any results for the Palestinians.

“The Sharm el Sheik summit is an Israeli and American trick,” one banner said.

Clinton is widely viewed in the West Bank and Gaza as partial to Israel, and demonstrators said they fear that Arafat will be pressured into submitting to U.S.-Israeli demands and that more than 90 Palestinian “martyrs” will have died in vain.

In the volatile West Bank city of Hebron, about 7,000 mourners buried a man shot to death during clashes with Israeli troops the day before. The body was covered by a Palestinian flag and carried by uniformed Palestinian police while gunmen fired into the air.

“Revenge! Revenge!” they chanted, and “Down with the olive branch! Long live the rifle!”

With tensions running so high, the possibility remained that a fresh outburst of violence could still impede a Monday night meeting .

And even though the goal of the summit is crisis management rather than peacemaking, the chances of success are highly uncertain. Israelis and Palestinians appeared to be headed to Sharm el Sheik without an agenda or a previously agreed-upon package of compromises.

Barak and Arafat had developed a rapport in the first months of the Israeli leader’s government last year, and there were high hopes that they might reach a final settlement. But the gulf between the two sides’ positions became apparent during negotiations at Camp David in July.

Those talks ultimately broke down over the contentious issue of who should control Jerusalem. Barak was prepared to offer Arafat control over parts of East Jerusalem, but the Palestinian leader rejected the proposition as too little.

Since then, relations have gone rapidly downhill. The last two weeks of violence have hardened positions on both sides and leave little hope for a peace agreement.

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington and special correspondents Fayed abu Shamallah in Gaza and Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.