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Israel, Palestinians to Hold Security Meeting in Cairo: Radio
Israeli and Palestinian senior officials will hold a security meeting on stopping the ongoing violence between them in Cairo on Friday, Israel Radio reported on Thursday.
Palestinian Preventive Security Service chiefs Mohammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub will represent the Palestinian side in the meeting, which will be mediated by visiting U.S. Central Intelligence Agency head George Tenet, the report said.
Meanwhile, the Israeli side will be represented by Avi Dichter, head of Israel's General Security Service (Shin Bet).
The meeting is scheduled to keep the fragile ceasefire between the two sides in the past few days after eight months of violence and discuss the next steps both sides should take, the Radio said.
Tenet was sent by U.S. President George W. Bush to the region for mediating an effective timetable for implementing the recommendations of the Mitchell report, which was published last month by an international fact-finding committee on the Mideast violence and accepted by both Palestinians and Israel.
The report urged both sides to stop violence, carry out confidence-building measures after a cooling-off period and resume their peace talks.
Tenet was scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday.
He already met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Wednesday, during which a plan to hold the Israeli-Palestinian security meeting was reportedly discussed.
In a related development, the Radio quoted an unnamed diplomatic source as saying that Sharon and Arafat had reached an agreement on Thursday that the Palestinians will make maximum efforts to prevent violence in the following three regions: the Gilo community south of Jerusalem, the Netzarim settlement in Gaza, the Rafah border area between Gaza and Egypt.
All the three sites had been major conflict points in the past eight months.
So far, over 570 people had been killed in the violence, most of them Palestinians. Since Arafat announced a ceasefire last Saturday, a delicate ceasefire held on the ground despite sporadic incidents.
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