Israeli officials in Washington said early Sunday that Prime Minister Ehud Barak might still be able to meet this week with US President Bill Clinton, despite his sudden return to Israel early Sunday.
Barak was already en route to Washington when he learned of the crisis, after a hijacked Russian plane landed in southern Israel.
"We decided to return home," Danny Yatom, Barak's top security advisor, told journalists traveling aboard the prime minister's plane during a landing in a military air base in Britain.
"The pilot of the hijacked plane sounded very pressured, so we let him land in Israel," Yatom said.
The Israeli prime minister indefinitely postponed his meeting with Clinton, which had been scheduled for Sunday morning, but Yatom said that the prime minister might be able to meet with the US president despite the detour.
"If things take a turn for the better on the way back, we can always return (to Washington,)" he said.
The talks in Washington were aimed at quelling six weeks of bloodshed in the Palestinian territories.
Barak spokesman Gadi Baltiansky said in Washington that the Israeli embassy in the United States had informed the Americans of the emergency situation, and, stressing the importance of the meeting between Clinton and Barak, said it was far from certain that the summit would be scuttled.
"If the crisis of the hijacked plane is resolved and the prime minister is able to fly to Washington in time to meet with the US president before his scheduled departure for Asia, the prime minister could return," Baltiansky said.
Hours after he spoke, a senior Israeli military official told army radio in Israel that the hijacking was nearly over following the surrender of one hijacker who was apparently working alone.
The Dagestan Airlines plane on a flight from Dagestan in the northern Caucasus to Moscow was hijacked overnight with 48 passengers, including two children, and 10 crew on board.
It made a refueling stop in Baku, Azerbaijan, before heading on to Israel, where it landed at dawn at a military airport in the south of the country, Israeli radio reported -- WASHINGTON (AFP)
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