JERUSALEM, JAN 7: Israeli and Palestinian security officials said they would meet the US CIA Director George Tenet in Cairo on Sunday for talks on ending bloodshed blocking a last-gasp peace bid by President Bill Clinton.A White House spokesman said Clinton could decide by Sunday or Monday whether there was sufficient agreement on his proposed West Asian peace guidelines to warrant further discussions before his Presidency ends on January 20.Israeli sources said the Cairo meeting might take place at night. Cabinet Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak said they would discuss ending 14 weeks of violence in which 301 Palestinians, 13 Israeli Arabs and 43 other Israelis have been killed.In preparation for possible further violence, Israel's army said on Sunday it had moved several security checkpoints deeper into the West Bank to buffer Israeli towns from shooting attacks by Palestinian gunmen.Key clauses of Clinton's peace blueprint call for the Palestinians to give up the right of their millions of refugees to return to former homes inside Israel in exchange for sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem.In Jerusalem, organisers predicted hundreds of thousands of pro-Israeli demonstrators would turn up at a rally on Monday night to show support for a united city under Israeli leadership.Israel has traditionally opposed ceding any of the holy city it regards as its eternal capital. But Barak has said he is willing to consider transferring some areas envisaged by Palestinians as part of a future capital.Israel and the Palestinians say they doubt Clinton, the main mediator in seven years of peacemaking, can forge an accord before transferring power to George W Bush.But Lipkin-Shahak, a former army chief due to take part in the Cairo talks, said that discussions on halting the violence could also help serve to achieve an agreement. He said Clinton might issue a statement that would preserve the progress made.Tenet, head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has played a pivotal role in Israeli-Palestinian security talks in the past, signalling the deep involvement of the Clinton administration in trying to end the 52-year conflict.Palestinian officials said among those due to attend the Cairo meeting were Jibril al-Rajoub, head of Palestinian preventive security in the West Bank, and Amin al-Hindi, Chief of intelligence in the West Bank and Gaza.Israeli and Palestinian officials said Egyptian intelligence representatives would also attend, while in Amman Palestinian President Yasser Arafat briefed Jordan's King Abdullah and Saudi Deputy Prime Minister Prince Sultan on Clinton's peace plan.Underscoring the hardships, thousands of Palestinian mourners took to West Bank and Gaza streets to bury their dead on Saturday, including Arij al-Jabali, a 19-year-old woman shot by Israeli troops inside her house in Hebron on Friday.Israel's Hebron commander, Colonel Noam Tibon, told Israel Radio that Palestinian gunmen were to blame, ``I personally am very sorry that a woman who was certainly innocent was killed. But we must understand the situation.``They enter people's homes, threaten them with force and fire either from inside the house or near the house, and run away, and those who receive the Israeli army's fire are innocent people,'' Tibon said.But Palestinian witnesses said the Israeli army had fired at the houses without being shot at by Palestinian gunmen.The head of Palestinian preventive security in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan, also due to join the Cairo talks, said on Saturday, ``In these meetings, we do not take Israeli dictates. We ask for an end to Israel's aggression on our people and to stop acts of terrorism by the Israeli army.''Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak underlined in a speech to an enthusiastic crowd of Jewish students from abroad on Saturday night how far apart the two sides are.``Let me say loud and clear: we will not agree to the right of return into Israel and I do not intend to sign any document that passes sovereignty over the Temple Mount to the Palestinians,'' Barak said, referring to the Jerusalem site sacred to Jews and Muslims, who revere it as al-Haram al-Sharif.Opinion polls show Israel's leading hawk Ariel Sharon trouncing Barak in a Prime Ministerial election on February 6 amid the bloodiest prolonged violence in years.Israel Radio reported Barak was resisting pressure from within his left-centre Labour Party to step aside in favour of Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres, his predecessor as party chairman shown in the polls to have a chance at beating Sharon.``Even if I will have four supporters and I will be convinced of the justness of my path, then I will run,'' the radio's political correspondent Yaron Dekel quoted Barak on Sunday as having told him.
