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Arafat's cabinet accuses Israel for stalling peace

GAZA: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's cabinet blamed Israel on Sunday for the lack of progress made during a second round of peace talks that concluded in the United States over the weekend.

"The second round of negotiations has been concluded without achieving any fundamental progress because of the Israeli attempts to jump over the international...resolutions," the cabinet said in a statement.

The cabinet was briefed on Sunday by a senior Palestinian negotiator who had just returned from week-long talks with the Israelis at Bolling Air Force base near Washington.

Israel and the Palestinians are striving to meet a mid-May deadline for a framework deal ahead of a final accord in September that would solve the major differences of borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements.

"If the first round was zero, the second one could be close to zero," Asaad Abdel-Rahman, a PLO executive member present at the cabinet meeting, told Reuters.

"There hasn't been much progress. The gap is still wide and there are no bridges between the two positions," he said.

Talks are to renew at the end of the month in the region with the arrival of U.S. special peace envoy Dennis Ross. Arafat is scheduled to meet U.S. President Bill Clinton in Washington on April 20.

Israeli television reported on Friday that Israel would publicly recognise a Palestinian state in the May agreement, holding off on the more difficult issues of borders and Jerusalem until the final deal in September.

But Yasser Abed Rabbo, who heads the Palestinian final-status negotiating team, said the Palestinians rejected the proposal.

"We consider these ideas to be a cornerstone and a basis for any agreement to be reached," he said.

Arafat has said he will declare a state in September with or without a deal with Israel. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel calls Jerusalem its "united, eternal capital".

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made a whirlwind trip to Washington last week where he agreed to greater U.S. involvement in the Palestinian peace track. It had lagged for months while Barak pursued a peace deal with Syria.

Syrian-Israeli peace talks broke down in January, and a last-ditch effort by Clinton to revive the negotiations during a meeting last month with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad failed.-Reuters