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Arafat Begins Major Overseas Initiative As Middle East Toll Rises
GAZA CITY (AFP) - As the death toll rises from unrest in the Middle East, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat begins a major diplomatic initiative that will culminate in talks at the White House.
Arafat travels to Egypt Wednesday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak on the situation in the Middle East before heading to Britain for similar talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair, his advisor said on Tuesday.
On Thursday he travels on to Washington for talks with U.S. President Bill Clinton, who will hold separate talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday.
Deadly unrest flared in the Palestinian territories again on Tuesday despite moves to ease tensions ahead of the last-ditch bid by Clinton to end the bloodletting and repair the shattered peace process.
The death toll continued to mount, reaching 184, with fierce clashes reported in many parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that also left some 70 people wounded.
In Bethlehem, Abdallah Khaled Amarnah, 24, died after being shot in clashes with Israeli soldiers near Rachel's Tomb, an Israeli-controlled Jewish shrine at the northern entrance to the Palestinian ruled town, hospital officials said.
A second Palestinian, Said Abu Khatla, 24, died after succumbing to injuries sustained in clashes in the Gaza Strip four days ago.
As part of the moves to quell the violence the U.S. named members of an international fact-finding panel to investigate the ongoing violence as the Israeli and Palestinian leaders prepared to visit Washington.
Former U.S. senator George Mitchell, who served as mediator in Northern Ireland peace talks, will preside over the five-strong panel, the White House said.
The panel is charged with working with Israel and the Palestinians to probe the causes of the violence that has wracked the region over the past six weeks.
The panel, created Tuesday, "will provide an independent and objective review of the current crisis with the goal of preventing its recurrence," the White House said, stressing that for it to succeed, both Israel and the Palestinians must fully implement the understandings reached at the summit.
In Cairo, officials in Mubarak's office confirmed the meeting with Arafat but said no further details of the agenda were available.
Looking ahead to the meetings with Clinton, Israel played down hopes that they would lead to an immediate resumption of peace talks.
"There is no room for excess optimism regarding the meetings about the peace process this week in Washington," Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami was quoted by army radio as saying. Clinton is anxious to restore calm to the region before his term expires in January.
The U.S. leader is pressing Barak and Arafat on the importance of implementing the Sharm el-Sheikh agreements and restarting the peace process, which has virtually collapsed since the failure of the Camp David summit in July.
"The immediate priority [of the talks] must be to implement all of the provisions of the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement, particularly those aimed at stopping the violence and the bloodshed," the White House said.
The Palestinians say the violence began on September 28th following a controversial high-profile visit to a holy Muslim site in Jerusalem by hawkish Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon.
Israel, meanwhile, maintains that the clashes began well before the Sharon visit and were instigated to force it into further concessions in the peace process.
The Jewish state had vehemently objected to the full-scale international commission of inquiry into the violence originally demanded by the Palestinians, but agreed to the fact-finding panel under heavy international pressure at Sharm el-Sheikh.
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