Quadrilateral Talks of Zionists, CIA, PA, Egypt Fail
At the same time, the Palestinians reiterated that they would continue to work with Clinton and his peace team as well as with the new U.S. administration taking office this month to achieve a balanced peace in the Middle East.
"We can't accept Clinton's ideas as a basis for future negotiations or a future settlement. Clinton didn't take (Palestinian President Yasser) Arafat's reservations into account and these ideas don't offer our people their legitimate rights," senior negotiator Ahmed Korei told Reuters.
Clinton outlined his plan for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal publicly for the first time on Sunday and said he would send his special Middle East envoy Dennis Ross to the region.
Another Palestinian negotiator, Hassan Asfour, said on Monday that the outgoing U.S. president had failed in his efforts to achieve a final peace because his aides were influenced by Israeli positions that had already been rejected by the Palestinians.
Palestinian officials said Arafat, in talks with Clinton in Washington on January 2, had accepted the ideas with conditions, and only if amendments were made.
They said Clinton's ideas were identical to Israeli proposals presented to Palestinian negotiators in Washington late last month.
Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh told Reuters Israel accepts Clinton's ideas as a basis for a peace deal.
Clinton said Barak and Arafat had accepted his ideas as the basis for further efforts, but both had expressed some reservations.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo told Reuters that the Palestinian Authority would continue to cooperate with Clinton "in spite of the difficulties he's facing".
Meanwhile, a high-ranking Palestinian official said Monday that the Israeli-Palestinian security talks in Cairo aimed at ending the violence in the Palestinian territories and Israel failed, blaming Israeli "intransigence."
"The Cairo four-way security talks did not achieve any results because of the intransigence of the Israeli position and their insistence on continuing to keep the blockade on the Palestinian territories and divide them," the official said.
The overnight talks, also attended by the chief of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Egyptian officials, were designed to halt violence in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel.
Israel has sealed off the Palestinian territories for the greater part of the past three months in an effort to reduce the violence, which has left some 370 people dead, most of them Arabs.
Senior Palestinian and Israeli security officials and CIA Director George Tenet held a marathon session until dawn Monday on reducing the violence blocking a revival of a moribund peace process, a Palestinian source said.
Meeting at a secret location in Cairo, Palestinian and Israeli security chiefs began talks with Tenet at 7:00 p.m. (1700 GMT) Sunday and ended them at 5:00 a.m. (0300 GMT) Monday, the Palestinian source said.
The Palestinian, who asked not to be named, could not say whether the talks had ended or whether they would resume Monday. Nor would he disclose details of the discussions.
The Israeli Embassy however said that Israeli participants had returned to Israel to brief Prime Minister Ehud Barak on the talks.
The Israeli delegation was to include Shlomo Yanai, a high-ranking army official, and Avraham Dichter, the Head of Israel's Internal Security Force Shin Beth.
The Palestinian delegation was to be headed by Intelligence Chairman Amin al-Handi, joined by the head of preventive security in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, and his counterpart in the West Bank, Jibril Rajub.
The Palestinians and Israelis have contradictory goals for the meeting.
The Israelis demand an end to the Intifada, or uprising, that erupted after a controversial Israeli visit to a holy site in Bait-ul-Moqaddas on September 28. The Palestinians demand Israel stop military action on their people.
An Israeli government statement said late Sunday that Barak's "peace cabinet" had meet and stressed that a drop in violence was a precondition for relaunching peace talks with the Palestinians.
The peace cabinet' would meet again Monday to "receive a detailed report on the results of the Cairo meeting on security issues and commitments by the Palestinians to reduce violence and fight terrorism," the statement said.
But Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mussa told journalists late Sunday that the security meeting was not aimed at stopping the Palestinian Intifada.
"Not one Egyptian could accept a halt to the Intifada before there is a possibility of reviving the process toward a balanced and fair peace," Mussa said.
"The problem of security will not be solved without a solution to the political problem," Mussa said.
"So long as the political problem remains hanging and so long as the Palestinians have not realized their rights, anger will remain the principal form of expression toward the (Israeli) occupying forces," Mussa said.
Palestinian officials said the Head of Egyptian Intelligence Omar Seliman was also attending the meeting.
U.S. President Bill Clinton had personally called for this meeting, following talks in Washington last week with Arafat, who agreed to step up efforts to reduce violence "as much as possible" and to resume security cooperation with Israel.
Palestinian officials said the meeting is one of several that have taken place in Egypt since clinton extracted cease-fire pledges from Arafat and Barak at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in mid-October.
Since the 1998 Wye River accord, the CIA has been working to promote cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians on security issues.
While trying to stop the violence, Clinton is at the same time trying to secure a final Palestinian-Israeli settlement, but hopes are fading fast that one can be reached before he leaves office on January 20.
In the meantime, Jordan King Abdullah II and Saudi Defense Minister Sultan bin Abdel Aziz declared their countries' support for the Palestinian right to an independent state, officials said here Monday.
The Saudi and Hashemite kingdoms "back the rights of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian negotiators aimed at recovering (their) legitimate rights, including the right to setting up an independent state with Bait-ul-Moqaddas as its capital," one official said.
Prince Sultan arrived Sunday in Jordan for a two-day visit and met Abdullah late Sunday for talks that also covered ways of "strengthening the privileged ties" between the two countries namely in the fields of investments and defense, the official added.
On Sunday he also joined Abdullah for talks with Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat who made a fleeting visit to Amman to update the Jordanian monarch on the latest developments in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.
Prince Sultan left Jordan later Monday for Damascus at the invitation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, according to a report by AFP from Gaza Strip Israelis shot dead a Palestinian early Monday.
Abdel Hamid el Hurati, 34, a nurse, died during an exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians near the Zionist settlement of Netzarim, south of Gaza city. He was pronounced dead at Gaza's Shifa hospital.
Hurati's death brings to 371 the number of those killed since the start of the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) on September 28.
In another development a group of Palestinians shot at an Israeli bus and car driving on the outskirts of Ramallah in the central West Bank, an Israeli Army spokesperson said Monday.
According to AFP, no one was hurt in the incident.
Two other Israeli vehicles were also shot at Monday near Nablus in the north.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank village of Al-Khader near Bethlehem, three Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers who fired rubber-coated bullets and tear gas at the stone throwers, medical sources said.
The Palestinians were mostly children leaving school, said ambulance workers.
On Sunday, an Israeli bus and car were fired upon by automatic weapons by the southern Jewish settlement of Eilon Moreh near Nablus, and a military patrol was attacked close to Jericho.