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Clinton to meet Barak, Arafat on 29th in Switzerland

JERUSALEM: US President Bill Clinton will meet the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians in Switzerland on January 29 to try to boost Middle East peace, a Palestinian official said on Sunday.

It will be Clinton's first three-way summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat since they met nearly three months ago at a memorial ceremony in Norway for slain Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin.

Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath told Voice of Palestine radio that the meeting would seek to iron out a method for meeting a February 13 target date for a framework accord on an Israeli-Palestinian treaty.

"It was agreed in the United States that President Arafat will meet with President Clinton and Barak in Davos after which the way the negotiations will be conducted will be agreed," Shaath told the radio.

The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in the Swiss resort of Davos which runs from January 27 to February 1.

Shaath spoke from Brussels, where Arafat was due to visit European Union headquarters on Monday after meeting Clinton at the White House last week.

Israel and the Palestinians aim to forge a treaty by next September 13 that will tackle the toughest issues facing them -- the so-called "final status" issues that include borders, Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlers and the fate of Jerusalem.

The target date is part of an Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement signed in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, last September. The framework accord is the forerunner to a permanent peace deal to be concluded by September 2000.

Barak angered the Palestinians earlier this month by delaying a planned handover of another 6.1 percent of the West Bank to Palestinian self-rule under the interim peace deal.

Hard on the heels of the postponement, Barak met Arafat at an undisclosed location in central Israel on January 17 for unexpected talks about the troubled peace process.

In Washington on Friday, Arafat said the Palestinians reserved the right to declare an independent state in September.

Israel and the United States say the future of the Palestinian territories depends on the negotiations with Israel and that a unilateral declaration would prejudge the talks.

The Palestinians say international law gives them a right to self-determination even without Israeli consent.

On Thursday, Clinton urged the two sides to be flexible as they worked to hammer out a peace agreement, saying: "No one can get everything that either side wants but I am convinced we can get there."

Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states are due next week to attend the first multilateral Middle East peace talks in more than three years. That meeting, at the level of foreign ministers and joined by representatives of powerful industrial states, is to take place in Moscow.-Reuters