Israel's "peace cabinet" meeting has been postponed until Saturday, putting off an answer to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's request for 10 days of intensive negotiations in Taba, Egypt.
According to Haaretz newspaper, sources at Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's office stressed that despite Palestinian statements that the talks in Taba will begin Sunday, nothing has yet been decided regarding the proposal.
Government sources in Jerusalem said that it was possible that in the end, the talks will be held in another location, and under a different framework than that outline of the Palestinian offer.
Top Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qorei was quoted by the daily Friday as saying that the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will commence in Taba on Sunday and are to last ten days.
The delay, according to AFP, followed the discovery of a murdered 16-year-old Israeli's body in the West Bank Thursday.
On the security front, Israel bolstered its ties with the United States, signing an agreement that will increase military assistance by 60 million dollars per year. The aid will reach 2.4 billion dollars per year by 2008, said the agency.
Departing US President Bill Clinton, in an open letter published in Israel's top-selling daily Yediot Aharanot, said he had recommended they be among the first nations allowed to buy the advanced F-22 warplane when it becomes available.
Ben Ami, to whom Arafat relayed his wish for whirlwind talks during a negotiating session Wednesday, expressed optimism about the peace process.
"We have never been so close to peace," Ben Ami was quoted by the Turkish news agency Anatolia as saying on his arrival in Ankara for meetings with Turkish officials, said the agency.
But the murder of Ofir Rahum, whose body was discovered in a shallow roadside grave Thursday in Ramallah, cast a shroud over whether the "peace cabinet" would approve a final charge for peace before the February 6 elections for prime minister.
"The state of Israel will not continue with business as usual following the shocking murder of the Israeli youth," Barak said in a televised address Thursday night. "It is difficult to hold serious negotiations in an atmosphere of this kind of violence."
Rahum was laid to rest in the presence of hundreds of mourners Friday, many of them young people, amid a cold rain in his hometown of Ashkelon, south of Tel Aviv.
Shlomi Abergil, one of Rahum's friends, told Israeli public radio that Rahum had been tricked and led to his death by a woman, around 20, whom he had met in an internet chat-room.
He added Rahum had planned to meet her in Jerusalem this week and she must have fooled him into going to Ramallah, where Palestinian witnesses said they saw three youths shoot Rahum -- Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
