Arafat to hold peace talks with Clinton

12:00 PM

JERUSALEM - A car bomb wounded at least 40 people in Israel today, but peace hopes got a boost with the news that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat will have talks with President Clinton tomorrow.

Just hours after the car bomb explosion in the Israeli town of Netanya, an Arafat aide said the Palestinian leader would shortly fly to Washington on an "urgent visit" to the White House for talks with Clinton on U.S. proposals for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The announcement was a boost for Clinton's last-ditch bid to forge Middle East peace before leaving office on January 20, which had appeared damaged by the latest car bombing.

"President Arafat spoke by telephone with President Clinton for one hour and it was decided that President Arafat would make an urgent visit to Washington to meet with him in order to get a response to the questions raised by the Palestinian side," Arafat aide Tayeb Abdel-Rahim told the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Senior Palestinian officials said the meeting would be held on Tuesday afternoon (Wednesday morning, NZ time).

In Netanya, a coastal resort about 30km north of Tel Aviv, ambulance workers said one person was critically wounded and the others lightly to moderately injured in the car bombing in the town centre.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoting initial reports, described the evening rush hour bombing as a "terrorist attack."

Witnesses said they heard up to four explosions, apparently from a bomb or bombs inside a car.

"People are hysterical. Shop windows have been blown everywhere. People are crying. There is black smoke everywhere," a witness told Israel Radio.

Israeli security authorities have warned the public to expect an upsurge in bombings by Palestinian militants opposed to peace moves. Last Thursday a bomb exploded on a bus in Tel Aviv, wounding 14 people.

The attack initially threw further question marks over Clinton's efforts to use his last few days in office to broker a framework peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, who have been locked in battle for three months.

But a White House spokesman said the Clinton-Arafat meeting could take place as early as Tuesday and that Washington wanted to ensure "there is a common understanding of the parameters that the president put forward" for moving ahead in peace negotiations.

The Palestinians have expressed reservations about Clinton's ideas on issues at the core of the Middle East conflict, such as the future of Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and Palestinian refugees. Israel has said it would accept the proposals as a blueprint for further talks if Arafat did.

Earlier, the car bomb raised the possibility that the Israeli government might call a halt to peace efforts.

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel's Channel Two: "This attack is a serious attack, so serious that as far as I am concerned we should stop everything and think about where we go from here.

"We can not put up with a situation where every day we have another attack...all this escalation is the child of only one man - Yasser Arafat," Ben-Eliezer said.

Police voiced astonishment that so few people were wounded in the blasts, which badly damaged shops and cars, and that their injuries were relatively light. A deputy police commander, Danny Ronen, called it "a miracle."

Earlier, a senior leader of Hamas said the Islamic militant group might avenge Palestinian casualties by launching a new spate of suicide bomb attacks against Israeli targets. The group has killed scores of people in such attacks in the past.

The Netanya blast coincided with the 36th anniversary of Arafat's Fatah movement. The group called for an escalation of attacks against Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers to mark the day.

Before the blast, Egyptian Foreign Minister AMr. Moussa said after talks in Cairo with Arafat that there were "no indications" a deal would be sealed before Clinton's term ends on January 20.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana launched a one-day drive to persuade Arafat and Barak to accept Clinton's framework proposals for a final peace deal.

"I think we have a narrow window of opportunity and everybody has to do their best to grasp this opportunity that will never be back," Solana said at a news conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami.

"We, the Europeans, have tried to help as much as possible, and I think a symbol of that is that we are here today, the first day of the year, to try to help," he said before separate meetings with Barak and Arafat.

At least 298 Palestinians, 13 Israeli Arabs and 43 other Israelis have been killed in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that erupted three months ago in the wake of deadlocked peace negotiations.

In a separate incident, witnesses said Jewish settlers had driven into Hizma village near Jerusalem in two cars on Sunday and killed a Palestinian, Tahrir Rezeq, 22, shooting him in the head.

Israeli police said they were investigating, while a spokeswoman for the settlers said she had no report of the incident.

On Monday, Jewish settlers blocked roads to West Bank Arab villages in anger at Sunday's slaying by Palestinian gunmen of Binyamin Kahane, the son of anti-Arab rabbi Meir Kahane, who was himself killed by an Arab assassin in New York a decade ago.

Kahane's wife was killed and five of their six children were wounded in the roadside attack.

- REUTERS

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