Arafat won't attend

JERUSALEM -- Yasser Arafat decided Tuesday not to attend a key Arab summit, and his Cabinet accused Israel of trying to "blackmail" the Palestinian leader with tough conditions for letting him go. Arafat's absence could undermine Arab support for a Saudi peace overture being presented in Beirut. \nDespite calls by the United States that he let Arafat go to the summit, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said "conditions are not ripe" to do so. He insisted the Palestinian leader call a cease-fire first and that Washington back any Israeli decision to bar Arafat from returning home if there is violence during his absence. \nState Department spokesman Richard Boucher insisted Israel grant a "round trip" for Arafat to and from the summit, which opens in the Lebanese capital on Wednesday. \nUnderscoring the incendiary situation on the ground, two observers from an international force in the West Bank were shot and killed. The Israeli military said Palestinians opened fire on their car on a road used mostly by Jewish settlers north of Hebron, where the force is stationed. \nThe two observers -- from Turkey and Switzerland -- were the first members of the force to be killed. The monitoring group was created in 1994 as part of an agreement dividing Hebron into Palestinian and Israeli-controlled zones. \nAlso, two Palestinians from a militia linked to Arafat's Fatah movement drove a bomb-laden car toward Jerusalem's largest mall Tuesday morning, blowing themselves up when they were stopped by police. No Israelis were hurt. \nU.S. mediator Anthony Zinni made some progress in his efforts to broker a cease-fire deal. Israel grudgingly accepted new compromise proposals, while the Palestinians expressed some reservations. \nStill, Sharon said Arafat must "in his own voice, to his people" declare a halt to violence before being allowed to leave the West Bank town of Ramallah, where the Palestinian leader has been trapped by Israeli troops for months. \n"Unfortunately, the conditions are not ripe for allowing Arafat to go to Beirut," Sharon said on Israel TV's Arabic-language news, held after Al-Jazeera, the Arab world's leading satellite broadcaster, canceled a planned live interview with him. \nThen, in a new condition, Sharon said, "If it is said to Israel by the United States that (Israel) can refuse to allow him to return if there are terror attacks, it will be easier for me to allow him to leave." \nSeveral hours later, the Palestinian Cabinet announced Arafat's decision to stay home, saying Arafat "won't be blackmailed or accept Israeli conditions and won't take the risk of putting conditions on his return." \nEgyptian President Hosni Mubarak also decided not to attend after his government accused Israel of "playing games" and imposing "unacceptable conditions" on Arafat's travel. \nThat left the gathering without two key voices that support the Saudi plan, which calls for Israel to pull out of all the territories it captured in 1967 in exchange for an end to the Israel-Arab conflict. \nPalestinian shooting and bombing attacks have killed more than a dozen Israelis over the past week, setting back the U.S. effort to hammer out a formula for implementing a truce plan which was worked out last year by CIA director George Tenet and accepted in principle by both sides. \nAfter Zinni presented bridging proposals that conceded some points to each side, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Tuesday that the government accepted them, but without enthusiasm. "There are parts where we have to grit our teeth," he told Israel Army Radio, referring to Zinni's ideas. \nAt a meeting with Zinni in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Palestinian security and political officials raised objections of their own. Abed Rabbo has said the Palestinians seek to link the cease-fire to a plan for peace talks and reopening Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem. \nPalestinian officials said Zinni accepted Israel's position that its closures of the Palestinian areas would be removed only gradually and not immediately, as the Palestinians demanded; but the troop pullback to positions held before the fighting began in September 2000 must be completed within five weeks, they said. \nIn a nod to the Palestinians, Zinni did not back Israel's demand that many militants suspected of terrorist activities during the 18 months of fighting be arrested, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. According to Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Israel has a list of 105 such militants.