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Barak, Arafat in new

bid to revive peace process

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met late on Tuesday in a bid to relaunch peace negotiations frozen for the past month, sources from both sides said.

Palestinian sources said the meeting took place close to the central Israeli town of Lod and was also attended by Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qorei and Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy.

Israeli radio said only that the meeting took place in central Israel and the prime minister's office declined all comment.

The radio said Barak would be putting forward certain "confidence-building measures" in an attempt to persuade the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table.

The meeting came hot on the heels of a promise by Arafat to declare an independent state in six months despite Israeli warnings that he was playing with fire and should not threaten to sidestep negotiations with unilateral declarations.

The last meeting between Barak and Arafat on February 3 ended with no agreement, amid continuing discord over implementing the terms of a pact signed last September at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.

Ross was due in any case to meet Israeli and Palestinian officials as part of his fireman mission aimed at restarting negotiations and quelling Palestinian frustration with the lack of progress.

The Palestinians have vowed not to resume talks until Israel consults them about a delayed transfer of 6.1 percent of occupied West Bank land.

The two sides have already missed a February 13 deadline agreed at Sharm el-Sheikh to conclude a framework peace agreement, ahead of a final deal seven months later.

Arafat has insisted that Israel must stand by the September 13 deadline for a final accord on the most difficult issues in the conflict, including the borders of a Palestinian state, control over Jerusalem, refugees and Jewish settlements.

He has also said he will declare statehood with or without an agreement and that it is up to Israel to take steps to move the process forward and stop taking actions that derail the process, such as building "cancerous" Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

State radio said Barak's measures would include a further release of political prisoners, the opening of a second "safe passage" route linking the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars Israel owes the Palestinians in taxes and duties.

UNITED NATIONS: Israel's unilateral decision to pull its troops out of south Lebanon would be better if it were part of an agreement with Lebanon and Syria, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday.

He said that there was still time for "some movement on the Syrian and Lebanese track" before the scheduled pullout in July.

"It would be ideal and everybody would be relieved if there were to be a settlement between Israel and Syria and Lebanon," Annan said. Without an agreement, the withdrawal would "have an impact on UN troops in southern Lebanon," he said.

CAIRO: Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mussa urged Israel on Tuesday to stick to its timetable for peace, two days after an Israeli cabinet decision to withdraw troops from south Lebanon by July.

"If they want to impose a reasonable time frame, all well and good," Mussa said at a regional development conference here.

"But it must be very clear that if that time frame ends without any movement, the question will be: What is the difference between current Israeli policy and Israeli policy over the past three years (under former hardline prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu)?" Mussa said.

"If that time comes, we will review everything and discuss the situation from the beginning to the end," he said in an open discussion attended by reporters.ÑAFP