US President Bill Clinton said late Friday that a breakthrough in the ongoing Middle East crisis may be imminent thanks to a flurry of White House-led international diplomatic initiatives.
Speaking by phone at a fundraiser in Little Rock Arkansas, Clinton told the gathering of contributors that prospects seemed hopeful for peace in the region.
"We may get a breakthrough sometime in the next several hours. We're working hard trying to turn this thing around," the US president said.
"I hope you'll all say a prayer for us tonight," he added.
Clinton added that he has "been on the phone all day today and have some more work to do late tonight" to try to restore calm to the Middle East, which has been wracked by some of the worst violence in decades.
The US president, who remained in Washington late Friday, offered his apologies for missing the fundraiser benefiting State Senator Mike Ross, a candidate for the US Congress.
"After the loss of our sailors in Yemen yesterday, and the continued violence in the Middle East, I just thought I had to stay here and work," Clinton explained.
Earlier Friday, sources here said top US officials were still trying to establish favorable conditions for a four-way summit to include Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Clinton.
As of early Saturday however, Clinton was still scheduled to depart later in the day for a three-day Democratic party campaign trip ahead of US elections in November, a White House spokeswoman said.
The US president late Friday led a National Security Council meeting on the Middle East crisis and the blast, presumably caused by terrorists, that ripped a hole in a US destroyer in Yemen, killing 17 sailors and injuring 38 others.
In one of the day's developments Friday, UN Secretary Kofi Annan emerged from a meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Gaza City and declared that he expected an Israeli-Palestinian summit to take place in Egypt within 48 hours.
But White House spokesman P.J. Crowley suggested that Annan was expressing hope rather than certainty that such a meeting would take place.
"The secretary general's message was that he was hopeful based on his contact with the leaders today," the White House spokesman said.
In response to Annan's statement, the Palestinians distanced themselves from the prospect of an imminent summit with the Israelis.
Mideast violence has killed more than 100 people, most of them Palestinians, over the past two weeks, and injured more than 3,000.
Crowley said Washington still supported an offer by Mubarak that Egypt host the summit as soon as fighting in Israel and the Palestinian territories subsides.
"We continue to be supportive of President Mubarak's call for a summit as quickly as one can be put together," he said.
"We continue to work closely with President Mubarak and other leaders to help put such a meeting together if it is the judgment of the parties that it can be helpful."
Barak has expressed pessimism about chances for a summit, saying he expected Clinton to announce that none would in fact take place.
Annan said, however, that all the parties had accepted invitations to the summit except Arafat, and he expected a positive response from Arafat soon.
Barak and Arafat last met in Paris for marathon talks over the night of October 4 but failed to reach an agreement on a ceasefire, blocked by a dispute over Palestinian demands for an international investigative committee to look into the current bout of violence -- WASHINGTON (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
