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Barak Delays Decision on Arafat's Peace Proposal
Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak decided Friday to postpone a scheduled meeting of the inner-circle peace cabinet in the afternoon, officials in his spokesman's office said.
The meeting, which was set to decide whether to accept Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's peace proposal to hold marathon peace talks in the Egyptian city of Taba until Israel's February 6 Election, now may be held on Saturday evening instead, according to the officials.
The suggestion was proposed by Arafat while he met with Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami in Cairo on Wednesday. Ben-Ami later tried to convince Barak to accept the proposal.
Both sides hope the talks could reach some sort of peace agreement before Israel's prime ministerial election, in which Barak will run against hawkish candidate Ariel Sharon, leader of the opposition party Likud.
Earlier Friday, Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qurei (also known as Abu Ala), who held several sessions of talks with Ben-Ami in the past few days, revealed that the talks in Taba between Israel and the Palestinians will begin on Sunday and continue for 10 days.
However, the Israeli officials denied that such talks will begin on Sunday and added that nothing has been decided regarding the proposal.
It is possible that the talks may be transferred to another location and "under a different framework than that of the Palestinian offer," the website of Israel's Ha'aretz daily claimed.
The officials in Barak's office denied revealing the exact reason behind the postponement. However, rumors speculated that it was because the funeral of a 16-year-old Israeli boy, who was lured by an on-line Palestinian lover to Ramallah earlier this week and was killed there.
According to an Israel Radio's report Thursday evening, most of the peace cabinet members, or key ministers who are involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, agreed to Arafat's plan.
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