President Bill Clinton will meet with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on Thursday and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak next Sunday in a new Middle East peace effort. A White House spokesperson said that the goal was to assess the situation on the ground and find the way back to the negotiating table.
Meanwhile, former Israeli prime minister, Shimon Peres, who negotiated the last truce agreement with the Palestinians, has said that there was no alternative to continuing negotiations on a long term peace deal. Earlier, Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians, on a 16-year-old, in the Gaza Strip. The shooting of the teenager happened during disturbances at a refugee camp. The death was the first in two days during the current violence. Three people were injured in separate clashes in Gaza and the West Bank but the level of the conflict has continued to diminish since a truce was agreed last Thursday.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, has appealed directly to the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to stop those he said were organising violence in the streets. Mr Barak was speaking at a rally in Tel Aviv on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of his predecessor, Yitzak Rabin, an architect of the Middle East peace process. He said that Israel would never give up hope that a final peace could be delivered. Mr Barak and Mr Arafat are both due to travel to Washington this week for talks with President Clinton.
