Saudi Arabia offers Mideast plan

By The Associated Press

	Nabil Shaath
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JERUSALEM — Saudi Arabia has renewed an initiative calling for a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Arab world, the Palestinian foreign minister said yesterday.

Nabil Shaath said the proposal would call for Israel to withdraw from the lands captured in the 1967 Mideast War and agree to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in return for peace with the Arab world.

Shaath said the new Saudi plan would initially call for a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians and a halt to Israel's construction of a separation barrier in the West Bank. Israel says the barrier is meant to protect against suicide bombers. Palestinians say it is a land grab.

Such steps, including stopping the violence from both sides, would lead to a political process "by which the Arabs will be ready for total reconciliation and readiness to recognize the state of Israel," Shaath said.

	Hassan Nasrallah

Saudi officials refused to confirm the report. But one Saudi official said "there's a need to renew interest in the peace process"

Shaath said the Palestinians, Egypt and Jordan are helping draft the latest plan. They hope to present the proposal to the Arab League Summit in Tunisia in March and eventually bring it to the U.N. Security Council, he said.

The hope, apparently, is that an Arab call for a cease-fire would put pressure on militant groups to halt attacks on Israel, and that could in turn push Israel to fulfill its obligations under the U.S.-sponsored "road map" peace plan that calls for an independent Palestinian state by the end of 2005.

The initiative amounts to an extension of a Saudi plan endorsed by the Arab League in March 2002. It called on Israel to withdraw from occupied land in return for normal relations with the Arab world.

In related developments:

• Israel and Hezbollah will exchange prisoners Thursday and Friday, part of a deal in which the militant Lebanese group also promises to obtain information about Israel's most famous missing serviceman and Israel releases Lebanon's longest-held prisoner within three months, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said yesterday.

The first stage of the German-negotiated deal involves the exchange of 400 Palestinian prisoners, 23 Lebanese prisoners and 12 other Arabs for an Israeli businessman and three Israeli soldiers — listed by Israel as dead, though Hezbollah has not said whether they are dead or alive.

"A system was decided on in which all the relevant sides will cooperate fully until we discover the fate of Ron Arad and he returns home — something we all hope will happen in the near future," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his Cabinet yesterday. Arad is an Israeli airman whose plane was shot down in 1986 over Lebanon.

Nasrallah said a committee will be formed to seek information on Arad and four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon in 1982 during the Israeli invasion.

Nasrallah said further talks are planned to secure the release of Lebanon's longest-held prisoner in Israel, Samir Kantar, who is serving a 542-year sentence for the 1979 killing of an Israeli family.

• Hamas is willing to declare a 10-year truce with Israel if the Jewish state withdraws from territory occupied since 1967, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a leader of the Palestinian militant group, said yesterday.

Al-Rantissi said Hamas had concluded that it was "difficult to liberate all our land at this stage, so we accept a phased liberation." His comments appeared to strengthen signs of a big political shift by a faction sworn to destroy Israel.

• Jordan's foreign minister, Marwan Muasher, said yesterday that Arab states need to take a strong stand against suicide bombings that have claimed hundreds of Israeli lives in the past three years.

"We have not publicly, clearly, unequivocally taken a stand against suicide bombs," Muasher said. "We have not told the average Israeli citizen that suicide bombs are wrong from a moral and political point of view."

• The barrier Israel is building in the West Bank has worsened the plight of Palestinians and pushed up aid costs, said Cees Wittebrood, head of European Humanitarian Aid Office operations in the Middle East and Mediterranean.

"We calculated that some 20 percent is needed additionally to face the humanitarian consequences of this fence," Wittebrood said Saturday, adding that about 200,000 Palestinians living in Palestinian territories were affected adversely by the intrusion of the barrier into the West Bank.

• A Palestinian accused of collaborating with Israel was killed yesterday in the West Bank city of Nablus. The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group loosely linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the death of Nidal al-Dabbik, 27. It said he had given information on two Al Aqsa militants and a Hamas activist who were killed by Israeli troops.

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