TEHRAN Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo on Saturday denounced last-ditch U.S. attempts to broker a peace deal between his side and Israel, accusing U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration of favoring Israel.

"This is an attempt to get concessions from U.S. on our rights over Bait-ul-Moqaddas and the mosque compound, on refugees' right of return and on our sovereignty over the territories" captured by Israel in 1967, Abed Rabbo told Al-Ayam, a daily close to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

Abed Rabbo voiced particular resentment toward U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who he said "was using the pretext of time being short to win a bonus for the Clinton administration."

He added: "We don't want an agreement that serves only the electoral needs of Ehud Barak," the Zionist prime minister who faces an uphill reelection battle against hardliner Ariel Sharon.

Abed Rabbo has been a leading critic within the Palestinian Authority of the Clinton peace push, calling the outgoing president's proposals a plot that will endanger the Palestinian "national destiny."

Clinton is hoping to clinch a peace deal before he leaves office January 20, and both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have accepted in principle a set of compromises he drafted.

Another top Palestinian official on Saturday derided U.S. compromise plans on the status of Bait-ul-Moqaddas as "nonsense," saying the Palestinians could not understand what President Clinton was proposing.

"The status of Bait-ul-Moqaddas (in the U.S. plan) is not clear. It's nonsense," Palestinian International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath told Egyptian radio.

Clinton has reportedly proposed that Israel give the Palestinians sovereignty over the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site, while the Israelis would still control the area underneath that includes the Wailing Wall, Judaism's most sacred place.

Shaath said the Palestinians do not understand the meaning of "surface sovereignty and underground sovereignty."

Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat said Saturday he was ready to negotiate with Israel under the administration of U.S. President-Elect George W. Bush if an accord was not reached before Bill Clinton leaves office January 20.

"We will continue (with talks) at the same rhythm as with Clinton, who wants to seal something before his departure. We will continue with Bush," Arafat said, stressing his side was "doing its best" to reach a peace deal before January 20.

"We are deploying all our efforts (to reach an accord) because we do not want to be accused of stalling," Arafat told journalists before leaving Oman after a one-day visit.

Clinton is hoping to clinch a peace deal before he leaves office, and both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have accepted in principle a set of compromises he drafted.

But the two sides remain sharply divided over the status of holy sites in Bait-ul-Moqaddas (Jerusalem) and the fate of 3.7 million Palestinian refugees and have expressed doubt about reaching an agreement in the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, Amina Rimawi, a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and an official at the General Union of Palestinian Workers, was wounded by the Israeli military in the West Bank, the DFLP said Saturday.

"Amina Rimawi was hospitalized in Ramallah after having been hit in the face with a rubber bullet at the northern entrance to the Palestinian town of Ramallah" on Friday, DFLP leader Nayef Hawatmeh said in a statement from the DFLP's headquarters in Damascus.

Amnesty International announced Friday it was sending a new delegation to Israel and the occupied territories, and to areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority, to probe alleged human rights abuses by Israeli forces against civilians.

The mission, the fourth by the human rights organization since the resumption of the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) in October, will include Amnesty official Elizabeth Hodgkin, Carl Soodebergh, director of the Swedish branch of the organization, and David Holley, an independent military adviser.

They will examine "the use of lethal force by the Israeli forces against civilians, in particular the shooting against civilian residential areas, and the use of extrajudicial execution," Amnesty said in a statement.

Amnesty International has on several occasions accused Israeli security forces of violating the human rights of Palestinians, acts which it has said could be considered as war crimes.

According to other reports, Israelis are worried about the destiny of the Zionist entity. In an opinion poll on Friday, some 78 percent of Israelis voiced concern over the future of the Zionist regime. The Jewish settlers are worried about their security, because of the Palestinian Intifada, the poll said.

As the Zionists are getting more frustrated and more threatened by the Palestinians, Ehud Barak has also called on Moscow to try to return some 100,000 Russian Jews to the Zionist entity.

In another development AFP announced that FBI agents searched a Jewish center linked to an anti-Arab Israeli terrorist group, seizing computers and a truckload of documents.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman would not say why agents raided the Hatikva Jewish identity center in the New York borough of Brooklyn.

The spokesman, Jim Margolin, would not say whether anything was seized but did say no one was arrested.

Some 30 agents seized 90 cartons of documents and six computers seeking evidence of links between the center and two organizations listed by both Israeli and U.S. authorities as terrorist groups, the center's director, Mike Guzojsky, said in a statement published on the Website www.kahane.org.