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Clinton Sets Minimum Success of Mideast Summit as Ending Violence
US President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that at least an agreement on cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians must be reached in the ongoing Mideast Summit which witnesses no major progress on Monday.
Clinton expressed the idea while holding separate talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak here early Tuesday morning, an Egyptian source disclosed.
Clinton decided to extend his stay in the Egyptian Red Sea resort from Monday midnight to Tuesday noon in order to invest more time in containing the Israeli-Palestinian crisis which left over 100 people dead and 3,000 others injured in nearly three weeks.
However, both Barak and Arafat declined to retreat from their fundermental stands, which cast shadow over the summit called to try to end the violence and revive the Mideast peace process.
On Monday at the opening ceremony of the summit, Clinton vowed to get the peace process going, saying,"We can not afford to fail here."
Barak said after arriving here Monday morning that he will not pull back Israeli forces or reopen Palestinian areas until Arafat re-arrests dozens of militants released from Palestinian jails recently and tells security forces to stop shooting and participating in street clashes.
Barak also reiterated Israel's view of not accepting any kind of international investigation committee, but only a U.S.-led fact-finding team to probe the causes of the clashes, which is obviously unacceptable to the Palestinians.
As the marathon emergency Mideast summit enters its second day, there will be bilateral as well as multilateral talks going on in the small hours.
A closing session of the leaders, which was scheduled at 10:00 a.m. (0800 GMT) in which a final statement is expected to be issued, has been postponed.
The current summit was hosted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and also attended by Clinton, Arafat, Barak, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Jordan's King Abdullah II and European Union High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solona.
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