March 27, 2002	Wednesday	Muharram 12, 1423

TEL AVIV, March 26: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Tuesday conditions are “not ripe” to allow Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to go to the Arab summit in Beirut, after another day of talks here failed to bring a truce deal any closer.

“In my opinion, the conditions are not ripe for Arafat to go to Beirut,” he said, adding that “President Arafat must declare a ceasefire in his language to his people and seek an end to the violence.”

In a rare interview on Israel’s national Arab-language television, Sharon said that even if Arafat were to attend the summit on Wednesday and Thursday, he reserved the right to decide if he came back.

He said such a decision would depend on “whether there are any terrorist attacks in his absence”.

The interview, in which he spoke in Hebrew with his words translated into Arabic, replaced a cancelled broadcast with the leading Arabic satellite television news station, Al Jazeera.

Asked what his message to the Arab world was on the eve of the Arab summit, Sharon said: “The state of Israel wants to reach peace.”

His stern message came as US-led efforts to close a ceasefire deal and end 18 months of bloodletting snagged over Palestinian objections to a compromise solution submitted by US envoy Anthony Zinni.

Israel said it had agreed in principle to US compromise proposals, but Palestinian negotiators returned empty-handed from discussions on them with Zinni, saying they would only accept a truce deal with a political, not just security, dimension.

A US official said he hoped the talks might resume on Wednesday, but added arrangements remained “fluid”.

And while negotiations dragged on, occupied Al Quds dodged a devastating blow when police foiled an apparent bomb attack near the city’s largest shopping mall by two Palestinians in a car who then blew themselves up.

Caught between US pressure to let Arafat go and pressure from supporters not to ease up Arafat’s confinement in Ramallah, Sharon refused to say definitively whether his old rival could not return to the Beirut from which he was driven 20 years ago.

But chances looked slim, with one Palestinian official saying he doubted Arafat would go.

A final decision was possible on Wednesday, when Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres returns from China.—AFP