Barak blasts Arab summit's 'language of threats'

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Barak last night said his government would take a time-out from peacemaking with the Palestinians after an emergency Arab summit used what he called threatening language against Israel.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat responded by saying that Barak's decision was no surprise and anyone blocking his people's path to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital can "go to hell".

"Israel totally rejects the language of threats that came out of the summit and condemns the call, folded into the decisions, for continued violence," Barak told reporters.

In an official statement, Barak was quoted as saying at the weekly cabinet meeting that in light of the summit's results, "we will have to take a time-out whose purpose is to reassess the peace process in response to the events of recent weeks".

U.S. President Bill Clinton, in a telephone call to Barak, underscored his commitment to working with Israel and the Palestinians "to get past the violence and ultimately get back to the peace process", a White House spokesman said.

Four Palestinians, including a 14-year-old, were killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Sunday, bringing the number of dead in three weeks of bloodshed to 125, all but eight of them Arabs.

Shooting echoed on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where police said at least 12 Israeli apartment buildings built on land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war were raked by gunfire from Beit Jalla village near Bethlehem. No one was hurt.

Israeli helicopter gunships, as well as tanks firing machineguns, attacked targets in the village in response, the army said. Israel Armed Forces Radio said the helicopters fired two missiles. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

In Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli forces shot anti-tank missiles at "a primary source of fire", the army said. Witnesses said several empty Palestinian homes were damaged.

Arab leaders wrapped up a rare summit in Cairo by calling for a war crimes tribunal to investigate Israel's handling of the unrest.

Accusing Israel of massacring Palestinians, the summit said: "Arab states will prosecute according to international law those who caused these barbaric practices and demand that the Security Council form a special international criminal court to try Israeli war criminals."

But the two-day summit stopped short of calling on Egypt and Jordan, which both have peace treaties with Israel, from cutting ties with the Jewish state.

Asked to respond to Barak's call for a time-out in the peace process, Arafat told reporters on his return from the summit to Gaza: "I expected this from him. It's not the first time he's said something like this."

Arafat said the Palestinian people were "continuing the road to Jerusalem", which they claim as the capital of a future state. "To accept it, or not to accept it -- let him go to hell," he said, without mentioning Barak by name.

Addressing his cabinet, Barak did not say when the Israeli time-out from an already shattered peace process would begin.

On Friday, Barak gave Arafat until the end of the Arab summit to implement understandings brokered by the United States at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt on Tuesday calling for both leaders to quash the violence.

"We call on the Palestinians to respect their commitments and to halt the violence and incitement," Barak told reporters.

"We will continue to view peace...as the eventual goal -- but not a peace that is achieved at any price while surrendering to violence," Barak said.

He told the cabinet Arafat was purposely fanning the violence to shore up international support for the unilateral establishment of a Palestinian state as early as November 15.

Arafat found lacklustre support for any unilateral declaration of a state during a global tour after his Camp David peace summit with Barak ended in disagreement in July.

Israeli government spokesman Nachman Shai acknowledged to reporters that taking a time-out from peacemaking would help the politically weak Barak woo right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon into his cabinet to form a national emergency government.

- REUTERS

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