A senior Palestinian official, Saeb Erekat, has outlined details of proposals which the Palestinians hope will revive the Middle East peace process.

Palestinian official Saeb Erekat

Mr Erekat said the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, will take the proposals to President Clinton, whom he is meeting in Washington DC next month.

They include the idea that an international peacekeeping force should replace Israeli troops in areas of the West Bank that Israel has said it wants to annex on security grounds.

The Israeli Foreign Minister, David Levy, said Israeli leaders knew they risked an end to Middle East peacemaking if the next land handover to Palestinian self-rule comprised less than 10% of the West Bank.

"I, the Prime Minister and all who are dealing with it know from the Americans and anyone else that a pull-back of less than a two-figure percentage won't advance the process and could bring it to an end or crisis," he told army radio.

Palestinians have been pushing for up to 30% more of the West Bank.

Mr Netanyahu and his cabinet have been touring the West Bank area in helicopters as part of a bid to map out Israel's bottom-line security demands. A cabinet decision is expected next month.

But Ahmed Tibi, an adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, critiscised Israeli expansion in the area as a setback to peacemaking.

The Israeli Defence Minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, is to lay the cornerstone next week for nearly 130 new housing units in the Jewish Beit El settlement near Ramallah, which is ruled by the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Israel radio also reported that the Government had issued tenders to build 126 housing units in the Jewish settlement of Nisanit in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians regard settlement expansion as a violation of peace deals and view the 140,000 Jews living in settlements scattered among the more than one million Arabs of the West Bank as an obstacle to peace.

Washington has been pressing Israel to carry out a "credible" pullback, promised to the Palestinians in a 1995 interim peace deal.

President Clinton is to hold separate meetings with Mr Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, next month, and is hoping to break the nine-month political deadlock that Middle East peace talks have suffered.
 

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