Confusion over Middle East peace deal

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has accepted a US proposal that would extend limited Palestinian sovereignty to parts of east Jerusalem, a Cabinet minister who is not part of the negotiating team said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has accepted a US proposal that would extend limited Palestinian sovereignty to parts of east Jerusalem, a Cabinet minister who is not part of the negotiating team said.

A negotiator on Barak's team at Camp David denied it.

Diaspora Affairs Minister Michael Melchior would not say how he knew Barak had accepted the US bridging proposal.

"We can accept, under the framework of Israeli sovereignty over all Jerusalem .... a certain extended administrative autonomy solution for some of the Muslim quarters outside the Old City, and only outside the Old City," Melchior said.

Eldad Yaniv, an adviser to Barak who is part of the negotiating team near Washington, denied that Barak had accepted any proposal, and said he was waiting for the Palestinians to react before he made his position known.

"No, the prime minister is not considering, he is not assessing, he is not supporting or opposing any idea or proposal until he is convinced that the Palestinians understand what lies before them and are ready with courage and responsibility to make painful decisions," Yaniv said.

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian spokeswoman, suggested that Melchior was deliberately distorting the American proposal - which she also admitted to not having seen - in order to test Palestinian reaction to an idea that would favor Israeli claims to the disputed city.

"Sometimes leaks are done on purpose in order to test the waters or in order to create misconceptions," she said.

She dismissed the idea as "symbolic sovereignty" that was not workable.

Still, there were signs that Barak's government was preparing Israelis for concessions on Jerusalem.

Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, an architect of the interim peace agreements that led to the marathon summit outside Washington, said years of paying homage to "a unified Jerusalem" had become a burden Israel should no longer bear.

"These villages are not really ours," Beilin told Israel army radio, speaking of Arab neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

"We must not allow this mirage to become an obstruction to Ehud Barak to arrive at the dream of peace with the Palestinians, now so close."

Jerusalem nearly scuttled the marathon talks last week, but Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agreed, at the behest of U.S. President Bill Clinton, to extend their stay. They are negotiating the core issues that have so far stymied lower-level negotiators: Jerusalem, borders and refugees. Jerusalem, with its sites holy to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, is by far the most sensitive issue.

Palestinians insist on full sovereignty in east Jerusalem.

Beilin said the neighborhoods in question could become part of the Palestinian state Arafat has pledged to declare this year.

Ariel Sharon, the leader of the hard-line opposition Likud party, told Israel radio that giving up such neighborhoods would isolate Jewish areas and subject them to the dangers of Palestinian attack.

Yaniv acknowledged that there would be hard, painful concessions to be made at Camp David if the sides were to come to an agreement.

"There is a heavy atmosphere as we face a historic decision," he said, describing it as a choice between "ending 100 years of bloodshed" or allowing the conflict to deteriorate into more violence.

Many Arabs say that Arafat needs to hold firm on Jerusalem, because the city is not holy only for the Palestinians, but for hundreds of millions of Muslims as well.

In Lebanon, Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a spiritual of the militantly anti-Israel Hezbollah, said Arafat "does not have the authority to change history, or humiliate Jerusalem.

"Any concession ... amounts to a betrayal of the historic trust that every Arab and Muslim carries with him," Fadlallah said.