Clinton makes late push for peace

Israel says the Fatah movement is behind the Tel Aviv bombing

US President Bill Clinton will send his Middle East special envoy Dennis Ross to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week, a senior US official has said.

The move is seen as a late effort to make progress on peace before Mr Clinton leaves office on 20 January, though the official said an all-embracing deal would be "difficult".

Abdullah Abu Jaber is said to have confessed

In a speech in Washington on Sunday evening, President Clinton told Israelis and Palestinians that there is "no choice but for you to divide this land into two states for two people".

Israeli security services earlier said they had arrested a Jordanian who they say is a prime suspect in a bus bombing in Tel Aviv at the end of December.

Police said in a statement on Sunday that Abdullah Abu Jaber, 25, was arrested on 29 December, the day after the attack.

Officials took the opportunity to repeat accusations that the Palestinian leadership was behind the bombing.

Woman killed

The announcement came as a Palestinian woman was reported killed and a 10-year-old boy critically injured in separate incidents on the West Bank.

Fatma Abu Geish, 20, was shot dead when Israeli soldiers fired on her car near Nablus, witnesses said.

The boy, Amro Khaled, was reported to have been shot in the head while walking home from school on the edge of Ramallah. The Israeli army said it had been firing rubber-coated bullets and tear gas at stone-throwers in the area.

Peace proposals

Mr Ross is to arrive in the region in the next few days, but US officials expect him to do little more than narrow the gap between the two sides.

Barak's survival depends on progress towards peace

Mr Clinton spelled out his proposals for a Middle East peace deal, which would give the Palestinians Gaza and most of the West Bank, but deny Palestinian refugees a "right of return" to Israel.

He also said he also foresaw an international force in Palestine to provide border security to Israel along the Jordan Valley.

However, he did not specify how the thorny issue of control over Jerusalem's holy sites could be resolved.

'Palestinian recruit'

On Sunday, Palestinian and Israeli security chiefs met CIA head George Tenet in the Egyptian capital Cairo to discuss ways to reduce the violence.

And Israel revealed that the suspected perpetrator of December's Tel Aviv bus bombing had been arrested.

Palestinian leaders find it hard to call a halt to the uprising

The Israeli police statement said that the alleged bomber had confessed to the crime.

He was said to have been recruited by intelligence officers from the Palestinian military and members of Tanzim, an armed group which Israel says is associated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

The Palestinian leadership denies the charges.

But correspondents say that the fact that such allegations are being made is a measure of how much trouble the peace process is in.

The Israelis, backed by the US, also want the Palestinian leadership to re-arrest Islamic militants recently released from jail and resume security co-operation.

But there is little optimism about the chances of an effective security pact being implemented on the ground.

Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority is believed to be in a difficult position - it finds it hard to tell its people to give up their daily clashes when there is no acceptable peace deal on the table.