Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's top adviser Danny Yatom on Friday renewed his accusation that France helped dissuade the Palestinians from signing a peace accord, an allegation that has been denied by Paris.
"French President Jacques Chirac gave (Palestinian leader Yasser) Arafat the impression that he would be able to get much more," Yatom told Israeli public radio.
Arafat, meeting Wednesday night in Paris with Barak and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, was ready to formalize an accord that would have been signed the next day in Egypt, Yatom said.
But France "contributed to the fact that at the end of the day Yasser Arafat did not sign, even though he told Albright that all the accords will be respected, whether written or verbal," Yatom had said Thursday.
Yatom's original comments were denied Friday by Chirac's office, which called the allegations "fantastic."
"It's untrue, it's ridiculous. These fantastic allegations do not correspond to factual reality, nor to the sense of France's diplomatic work," a spokesman for the French president said.
"Like the United States, France never stopped over the entire day pleading for calm and for the parties to reach an accord," the spokesman said.
But France's head rabbi, Joseph Sitruk, told Israeli radio that he had asked to see Chirac to protest against France's "unilateral" support for the Palestinian line.
Yatom also complained about French support for an international committee favored by the Palestinians to investigate the causes of the clashes, to which Israel is strongly opposed.
The United States has supported a "fact-finding commission," but has stopped short of calling for an international one - JERUSALEM (AFP)
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