Israelis, Palestinians Agree to Limited Meetings

JERUSALEM — Israeli and Palestinian security officials have agreed to hold regular, substantive meetings that U.S. envoy Dennis B. Ross said Tuesday he hopes will lead to a resumption of wider peace talks.

In three days of mediation, Ross, nearing the end of an emergency mission to help salvage the battered peace process, pressed leaders on both sides to use their security ties to put full negotiations back on track.

Ross and other U.S. officials, who declined to offer further details on the new framework for security meetings, cautioned that evidence of the mission’s success may not be clear for days or even weeks. Emerging from an evening meeting with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Ross said the security discussions must produce something concrete, and soon.

“We are taking a step in the right direction, but there is still a lot of work to be done,” Ross said after separate meetings with Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. “We need to see results.”

Ross is pushing the two sides to work together to find out who sent two suicide bombers to Jerusalem’s central produce market last month, and then to move to wider issues, including Israel’s demand that the Palestinians arrest about 230 members of militant organizations.

The envoy, according to Americans working with him, has been “relatively upbeat” about his progress in trying to restore broad-based security cooperation, the first step in a new U.S. peace initiative.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said a positive report from Ross on his talks has increased the likelihood that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will make her first negotiating trip to the region soon.

The difficulties of Ross’ task were much in evidence Tuesday. In Jerusalem and Ramallah, Israeli and Palestinian officials traded accusations of mutual intransigence. And in Nablus in the West Bank, thousands of Palestinians held a demonstration protesting U.S. and Israeli pressure on Arafat to clamp down on militants and criticizing severe Israeli sanctions imposed since the July 30 bombings. The demonstrators burned effigies of Ross and Netanyahu.

David Bar-Illan, a senior aide to Netanyahu, accused Palestinian security leaders of withholding information from Israel about the Jerusalem attack, which killed 16 people, including the two bombers. “We know they have information they’re not telling us about,” he said. “And they have yet to make any arrests or otherwise act on any of the information we’ve given them.”

Israel has demanded that the Palestinians arrest leaders of the military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both militant Islamic groups, along with several activists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It has also demanded that Arafat act forcefully against the groups’ infrastructures.

The Israeli government on Tuesday slightly loosened restrictions on agricultural products entering Israel from the Gaza Strip, allowing about 10 trucks loaded with vegetables to make the crossing. But many of the most punishing sanctions--including a cutoff in the flow of millions of dollars in tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority and a closure that prevents Palestinian workers from entering Israel--remain in place.

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With the market bombers still unidentified, Israeli officials say the closure is necessary to prevent another attack. But Palestinians say the measures are a collective punishment that is fueling frustration and anger toward Israel and could even lead to new violence.

Atef Alawneh, deputy finance minister in the Palestinian Authority, said the self-rule government was forced to borrow to pay its 80,000 employees after Israel withheld about $40 million in taxes it is required to pass along to the Palestinians.

Ross added his voice to the criticism Tuesday, telling reporters that such measures are “counter-productive.” U.S. officials have urged Israel to unfreeze the funds, which represent about 60% of the Palestinian Authority’s monthly revenue.

A senior Palestinian security official said Arafat has asked Ross to try before departing to persuade Israel to ease the restrictions. The official also indicated that the Palestinians, while consulting with their Israeli counterparts on the bombing case, may predicate any further cooperation on Israel lifting the sanctions.

Saida Hamad of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report from Ramallah.