M A I N   N E W S

Clinton appeals for peace

SHARM EL-SHEIKH (Egypt) — Oct 16 (Reuters) — US President Bill Clinton appealed to Israel and the Palestinians at a crisis summit in Egypt today to stop blaming each other for bloodshed that has all but wrecked West Asia peace efforts.

But the meeting coincided with fresh clashes in the West Bank town of Hebron, where witnesses and hospital sources said at least seven Palestinians were wounded by Israeli soldiers.

President Clinton told the sombre-faced leaders at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh they had to look to the future.

“In order to succeed, though we have a situation piled high with grievance, we have to move beyond blame,’’ he said. “We’ve got to focus on what we are going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next day.’’

Foreign ministers and Palestinian officials trying to draft a joint statement made little headway, an Israeli official said.

“It was a very difficult meeting. There was a serious confrontation,’’ the official said, adding that Israel’s acting Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami had rejected Egyptian and Palestinian formulations that would have blamed Israel.

He said the meeting had adjourned abruptly, but that the participants agreed to reconvene later.

President Clinton said the summit, called after Israeli-Palestinian clashes that have killed at least 100 persons, all but seven of them Palestinians or Israeli Arabs, had three aims.

“We want to end the violence and restore security cooperation,’’ he said. “We hope to achieve an agreement on an objective and fair fact-finding process on what happened to bring us to this sad point and how we can avoid having it ever happening again and we want to get the peace process going.’’

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat demands an international inquiry into the violence. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak says he will only accept a US-led fact-finding mission.

Disagreement over an international inquiry led to the failure of an Arafat-Barak meeting with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Paris on October four.

President Clinton recalled the progress achieved in the past seven years of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, saying: “We shouldn’t give it all up for what has happened in the last few weeks.’’

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned in his opening speech that putting the peace process on hold could create chaos that might spread across the whole of West Asia.

He appeared to blame Israel squarely for the crisis.

“The Palestinian people have been exposed to dangerous aggression,’’ he said. “We have to put an end to the military aggression of the Israelis against the Palestinians because this had a really negative effect on the peace process.’’

MOSCOW: Russia, co-sponsor of the Middle East peace process, was set to snub the emergency summit in Sharm el-Sheikh today after Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov declined to change his programme and fly to Egypt, Interfax reported.

A spokesman for Ivanov had said barring a last-minute change of plans, Russia would skip the pivotal summit, highlighting the Cold War superpower’s fading influence in the region, the agency said.

The minister will hold routine talks in Moscow with his Azerbaijani counterpart Vilayat Guliyev instead of joining Israeli, Palestinian and US leaders.

Russia had said earlier it was ready to participate in the Middle East summit if it was considered “on the same level as the other participants,” including US President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.