BREAKTHROUGH? ARAFAT ACCEPTS AMERICAN PEACE PROPOSAL

Jerusalem-----January 3.......The White House has announced that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has informed US President Bill Clinton that he accepts the latter's proposals, albeit with several reservations, as a basis for further discussion. White House Spokesperson Siewert noted that while Prime Minister Ehud Barak has responded similarly, there is much work yet to be done and added that it would be difficult to achieve an agreement unless the violence stops. A senior diplomatic source in Jerusalem said that Israel needs additional details and added that the general picture of the situation has not changed.

In response to Arafat's positive tone, Israel agreed today to send a top-level envoy to Washington in the wake of the productive meeting between Arafat and Clinton, according to a source in the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak . Barak's chief of staff, Gilead Sher, is expected to be dispatched to Washington to discuss the results of Clinton's meetings with Arafat on Tuesday and Wednesday, the source said. The decision to send Sher was made at a meeting of Barak's peace cabinet, called after Clinton briefed Barak on the results of the White House meetings. After the Clinton-Arafat sessions in Washington, a top Palestinian official signaled Arafat's conditional acceptance of a U.S.-proposed framework for Mideast peace negotiations.

Israel's Cabinet also decided to accept what it called Clinton's "triple mechanism" to reduce violence in the region and said it would appoint another Israeli representative to work on that proposal. That mechanism, the Cabinet said, will deal with curbing terror attacks and reducing the violence. The mechanism would involve an Israeli, a Palestinian and a U.S. official. White House officials cautioned that it was easy to oversimplify the situation, but said Arafat now had a "better understanding" of the proposed framework for negotiations and "is open now to talking based on our ideas." In the words of one U.S. official, Arafat's "acceptance, if you want to call it that, included many reservations and conditions, so it is our view that it is best for us not to try to characterize what he said. A senior White House official said "The president believes real progress was made and now will get the prime minister's sense and see how to proceed from there." U.S. officials said it was unlikely but not out of the realm of possibility that there could be a "summit-style" meeting soon, but that it was "far more likely" that there would be a meeting at the senior negotiator level before the leaders come together. Arafat left Washington on Wednesday for Cairo, where he was to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Arab League ministers. As he left his hotel on his way to Andrews Air Force Base, Arafat said he intended "to push the peace process forward."