PARIS, OCT 4: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat cast doubt on a widely-expected meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday and demanded an outside inquiry into Arab-Israeli violence that has killed 58 people.No major clashes were reported in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday following six days of fierce battles that also swept Arab towns in northern Israel.But tensions remained high after the worst violence in the region in four years and the collapse of a short-lived ceasefire on Tuesday.Paris was the first stop on a new diplomatic drive, spearheaded by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to bring Arafat and Barak together to thrash out an end to the bloodshed and revive a peace process now in tatters.Both men were scheduled to attend talks in Egypt on Thursday hosted by President Hosni Mubarak.Arafat, emerging from talks with French President Jacques Chirac, cast doubt that his widely-expected Paris meeting with Barak, to be hosted by Albright, would take place."The meeting will depend on the meeting which I will have with Mrs Albright," Arafat said. "For now it's not on the agenda."Israeli and Palestinian officials had earlier said the two would definitely meet.Albright tentatively scheduled a meeting with both Barak and Arafat at 1:45 P.M. (1145 GMT) at the residence of the U.S. Ambassador to France and a news conference by herself at 3:15 P.M. (1315 GMT)."What we want is an international investigation andprotection," Arafat told journalists, voicing a demand that Israel rejected two days ago.A senior Israeli official said Arafat had already agreed to a U.S.-Led three-party inquiry that would study separate findings by Israeli and Palestinian security officials about the violence.United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was due in Paris on Wednesday, also planned to meet Barak and Arafat as part of the diplomatic push for peace.The death toll from nearly a week of violence between Palestinians and Israeli security forces rose to 58 on Wednesday.Hospital sources in the West Bank said two Palestinians had been killed in the town of Beitounia in a gun battle during the night between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.Another Palestinian, from the West Bank town of Halhoul, died in hospital from wounds he had received in the fighting, which is the bloodiest unrest for at least four years.The death toll comprises 46 Palestinians and nine Arab Israelis killed in clashes with Israeli forces, one Israeli border policeman, one Israeli soldier and one Israeli Jewish civilian.The clashes erupted on Thursday after Israeli right-winger Ariel Sharon triggered Arab anger by visiting a Jerusalem shrine holy to Muslims and Jews. An Israeli soldier had been killed in an unrelated bomb explosion in the Gaza Strip a day earlier.A few days earlier, Barak played host to Arafat at his private, suburban home for their first talks since the U.S.-Hosted Camp David summit in July ended without a deal.Key issues such as the future status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees have blocked an agreement to end 52 years of conflict.Israel's acting foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, said themain purpose of the Paris talks should be to set the peace process back on track."We must not, even in these Times of crisis and bloodshed,lose our perspective as to what the main aim is," he told Israel Radio.But a senior State Department official said: "Common senseindicates we are not going to get far in the peace process while violence is going on."In Baghdad, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was quoted astelling a group of university professors that Arab leaders had taken a weak stance to what he called Israel's massacre of Palestinians."Enough is enough, we should not accept any morehumiliation, let us put an end to Zionism," he said. "If they (the Arab rulers) cannot do it, Iraq is ready to put an end to Zionism."
