Barak, Arafat agree on snap Middle East summit in Egypt

"There were suggestions and certain demands. But we did discuss it with the parties," Annan said before leaving Israel for the summit venue, Sharm el-Sheikh, for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The UN chief said he had asked for a ceasefire in the lead-up to and during the summit, which could open as early as Sunday night, according to Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mussa.

In Washington, US President Bill Clinton welcomed the holding of the summit which he said would take place on Monday, without confirming his own attendance. "We have been working for more than a weeek to try to persuade the parties to find a way out of the cycle of violence and find a way back to negotiations," he said in a televised statement.

"I’m very pleased Barak and Arafat have accepted Mubarak’s offer. It will convene Monday," he said, calling on both sides to stop violence, restore security and set up a "fact-finding mission". Israel’s acting Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami said in Tel Aviv that there should be a ceasefire with a view toward "trying to make it a permanent ceasefire." "We do expect that Sharm el-Sheikh will produce a consolidation of the end of hostilities. "But at the same time in order for peace consolidation or the cessation of hostilities to be permanent obviously we’ll need to put together some kind of political situation," he told CNN.

The Israeli Minister said he did not expect it to be a summit "on core issues. It should be a summit on cessation of hostilities, on the consolidation of peace." Israel had agreed to stop shooting and eased a closure of the Palestinian territories to make way for the talks, a Palestinian official said.

Arafat’s agreement to attend "is based on Israel’s acceptance to totally stop shooting and open the roads and crossing points for food and medicine and necessities," Palestinian International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath told AFP.

The diplomatic breakthrough after a week of intense shuttle diplomacy came despite earlier comments from Barak that he expected the United States to announce there would be no summit.

Egypt said the summit would group Clinton and his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak with Arafat and Barak as well as Annan and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Paris denied a statement by Mubarak that the European Union and France had also asked to take part, while Moscow said Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov had no plans to join the summit. But the Palestinians said they insisted on the participation of the EU presidency and Russia. Arafat’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina had earlier said the Palestinians’ main assurances had been that "President Mubarak is there and President Clinton is there and for us this is enough." Barak and Arafat last met in Paris for marathon talks on October 4 but failed to reach agreement on a ceasefire, blocked by a dispute over Palestinian demands for an international probe into the violence.

A total of 106 people have been killed and about 3,000 wounded, most of them Palestinians, since the unrest erupted on September 28.