The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak confirmed tonight that he plans to go to Washington next week for talks with US President Bill Clinton. Mr Barak said that his visit would come a few days after that of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Mr Arafat has confirmed within the past hour that he has accepted President Clinton's invitation to come to Washington for talks on Thursday.
US ambassador Martin Indyk told local television from Rabin Square in Tel Aviv: “We will have to see that the violence is subsiding. The president wants to talk to both prime minister Barak and chairman Arafat to see how we can try to put the process back on track. There really is no alternative and the question is how to do it, that is what the president will be engaged in doing until his last day in office." Mr Clinton invited the Palestinian leader to meet him on Thursday. The president is hoping to persuade both leaders to implement a series of ceasefire agreements reached between the two sides and to find the path to renew the deadlocked peace talks.
Former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, who brokered the latest ceasefire agreement with Mr Arafat in Gaza City early Thursday, is scheduled to meet with French President Jacques Chirac in Paris on Monday to discuss how to put an end to the violence and renew the peace process.
Meanwhile, at least 89 Palestinians were injured in clashes today with the Israeli army, witnesses and hospital sources said. Daily deadly clashes have engulfed the region following the controversial 28 September visit of Israeli right-wing leader Ariel Sharon to a site holy to Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem's old city. Despite the clashes, Israeli army officials said that levels of violence were sharply down, indicating the shaky truce negotiated by Arafat and Peres was starting to take effect.
Ambulance drivers said that the majority of those injured in the Gaza Strip on today had been shot in the legs, with only three receiving injuries to the abdomen. One boy at Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip was in a critical condition after being shot in the head, hospital sources said.
