US President Bill Clinton urged the Palestinians and Israelis to make concessions in order to achieve an agreement as he met visiting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on January 20 at the White House.

"In any process like this there must be inevitable and difficulty compromise," Clinton said when the meeting began in the afternoon.

"No one can get everything that either side wants but I am convinced we can get there," the president added.

The meeting was aimed at speeding up the pace of slow-moving talks between Israel and the Palestinians. In the morning, Arafat had a meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Arafat later had a lunch with Albright at her home in the capital's Georgetown neighborhood. Speaking at a regular briefing,Albright's spokesman James Rubin said, "We do regard it as a formidable challenge."

Speaking to reporters ahead the meeting, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart underscored deep differences between the Israelis and Palestinians.

"It's obvious how difficult the challenge is they face," the spokesman said, indicating that the deadline set for a frame agreement on final settlement can be postponed.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat last year set February 13 as the deadline for resolving their disputes over Palestinian statehood aspirations and the future of Jerusalem.

On the final settlement issues, Arafat is seeking the 60 percent of the West Bank that Israel still controls, wants to establish a state and be given part of Jerusalem as its capital while the Israelis seem to be agreeable to having a Palestinian state, but not on the Jerusalem issue.