Summit Revives Peace Hopes Mideast Leaders Agree To Restart Peace Talks Next Week

The leaders of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed in an unprecedented four-way summit Thursday to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks next week, according to a spokesman.

“I believe the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is back on track,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa told reporters after the summit concluded late Thursday night, following five hours of talks.

Moussa said Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat will resume negotiations next Thursday on expanding Palestinian authority throughout the West Bank. But he also said Rabin and Arafat reached no agreement on lifting the closure that Israel imposed on the West Bank and Gaza Strip Jan. 22, after two suicide bombers killed 21 Israelis at a bus stop near Tel Aviv.

“These are subjects for future negotiations,” he said.

The summiteers issued a statement pledging they will fight “terror and violence” and reaffirming their commitment to both the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and to a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Moussa read the statement at Ittahadiya Palace, where the talks were held.

In Washington, a senior State Department official described the talks as “unprecedented and historic.” He said the summit should “reinject movement into the process.”

He said the foreign ministers of Israel, Egypt and Jordan, plus a foreign policy spokesman for the Palestinian Authority in charge of civil administration in Jericho and the Gaza Strip, would meet in Washington, probably Feb. 12 “to find ways of implementing these agreements.”

The summit was the brainchild of Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Both men, aides say, were eager to reassure the Israeli public that peace talks can still move forward.

Mubarak issued the invitations to Jordan’s King Hussein, Rabin and Arafat to hold the first-ever meeting at a time when support for peace negotiations is shrinking among both Israelis and Palestinians.

Peres billed the get-together as the first step toward a “coalition for peace” to combat the political extremism he said threatens to undermine Israel’s efforts to reconcile with the Palestinians and to sign peace treaties with all its Arab neighbors.