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Barak, Arafat seek Arab support on disputes

JERUSALEM: Israel and the Palestinians, locked in a dispute over territory, launched separate diplomatic drives on Sunday to try to rally Arab support for their conflicting views on a final peace.

Palestinians called off negotiations scheduled for Sunday on a treaty with Israel while President Yasser Arafat held talks with President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. Israeli leaders took their case to both Cairo and Amman.

In Cairo after talks with Mubarak, Arafat accused Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak of not respecting signed accords.

Arafat said that under Barak, Jewish settlement expansion exceeded building approved by his right-wing predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu. Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa told reporters that Arafat described talks with Israel as "absurd".

Meanwhile, Barak flew to Amman for talks with Jordan's King Abdullah.

Senior diplomatic sources said Barak planned to discuss the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks as well as Israeli-Syrian negotiations which U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said last week had reached "a kind of pause".

Israeli-Syrian talks, revived in the United States in December after a 45-month break, fell apart in January. Syria demands Israel commit in advance to a full return of the Golan Heights captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel refuses.

For their part, Palestinian officials said there was no use negotiating with Israel because Barak had reneged on all the deals he had signed.

Israel was due to hand over another 6.1 percent of the West Bank to Palestinian rule on January 20, but Palestinians were upset the transfer would not include populated areas around East Jerusalem, where they envisage a future capital.

U.S. ENVOY SEES HARD NEGOTIATING ROAD AHEAD

U.S. Middle East troubleshooter Dennis Ross failed during a four-day-long visit to break the land deadlock which emerged at a Barak-Arafat summit at the Israeli-Gaza border on Thursday. Ross was due to return to the region on February 14.

"We will see additional difficulties, we may even see a crisis," Ross told CNN in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

He said a February 13 target date for a framework accord on fateful issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, settlements and borders was very close and gaps would be hard to bridge by then.

"On the other hand, September 13, I think, is a date that both sides feel is a very important date and a very real date," Ross said, referring to a target date for a permanent peace accord.

"We have time to resolve the questions of permanent status and both sides in my judgment are determined to do so," he said.

Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, due to discuss in Cairo displaced Palestinians with the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan and Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath, insisted on Israel Radio that "there is no crisis".

Levy's talks with Shaath, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa and Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdulilah al-Khatib were expected to focus on the issue of the return of Palestinians displaced in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.-Reuters