Barak offers to pull back armament in talks with Arafat

Nabil Shaath, a top aide to Arafat, said Wednesday that Barak made the pullback offer in talks mediated by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He declined to elaborate, but other sources said Arafat was willing to order his followers to avoid sites of recent clashes. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel wanted to assess commitments Arafat made to the Americans to contain the violence before pulling its troops back from the borders of Palestinian areas. The Palestinians also have pressed for an international inquiry into the violence on the West Bank and Gaza.

After talks that stretched into the early morning, a senior U.S. official cautioned that no agreement had been finalized although steps were still being taken to work things out. He said Albright was flying Thursday morning to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Barak flew home after the Paris talks and was not going to Egypt, the official said, adding that Arafat also may not go on to Egypt.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who joined the talks late in the day, agreed to work with the Americans to devise a formula acceptable to both the Israelis and the Palestinians for such an investigation, a U.N. official said.

The pullback proposal was an attempt toward dispelling mistrust that has imperiled already shaky peacemaking efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that under the proposed deal, tanks and armored personnel carriers would be returned to military bases within the Israeli-controlled territory. Without providing details, French President Jacques Chirac said, "It's a considerable step which could permit a return to calm I hope with all my heart, in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem."

"On the fundamentals, progress was made and measures drawn up aiming to a ceasing of the violence, which was obviously a precondition to the resumption of the necessary and inevitable peace process," Chirac said. At one point Wednesday, Arafat briefly stormed out of the meeting, returning only after Albright persuaded him to do so. Shaath said the Palestinian leader was angered by the Israeli and American refusal to set up an international inquiry into the recent bloodshed in Israel and the Palestinian areas. "He was angry and she tried to persuade him to return, and she did persuade him to return," Shaath told The Associated Press. He did not elaborate.

The talks between the two leaders and Albright stretched late into the night. Shortly before midnight, the three hurried over to the Elysee Palace to meet with Chirac, who has spearheaded a European diplomatic effort to end the violence. Annan also participated. President Bill Clinton, in Florida for a series of fund-raisers, was briefed on the talks by his national security adviser, Sandy Berger. Albright held two rounds of separate talks with each of the leaders before convening the three-way session. She had urged them to return to the "psychology of peacemaking."

More than 60 people have been killed and in excess of 1,800 injured, most of them Palestinians, in the fighting, which was triggered by a Sept. 28 visit to Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque compound by right-wing Israeli politician Ariel Sharon.

(klei/AP)