THE MIDDLE EAST: Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah expects an Arab League summit next month to back his plan to revive Middle East peace talks based on a land-for-peace formula, EU envoy, Mr Javier Solana has said after meeting the prince.
"He [the prince] has said that he is fully determined to move forward with his ideas that he thinks may bring peace to the region, that he is going to coordinate his ideas with the Arab countries . . . and he expects at the Arab League summit they will be approved," Mr Solana said in Cairo.
However, the violence continued in the Middle East with Israeli troops killing three militants in a shoot-out with armed infiltrators who crossed into Israel's southern Negev desert from Egypt yesterday.
Israeli forces launched a search after patrols found tracks near the Egyptian border indicating the men had entered Israel southwest of the town of Mitzpe Ramon.
After seven hours, troops located the three infiltrators and fought a gunbattle in which the infiltrators were killed and a soldier was lightly wounded, an army spokeswoman said.
Israel and the Palestinians are to hold a high-level security meeting at a crossing point on the border of the Gaza Strip today to discuss the security situation in the area, a Palestinian official said.
Mr Solana, held hastily arranged talks with Prince Abdullah in the kingdom's Red Sea port of Jeddah to explore the plan floated by the kingdom's de facto ruler to end more than 17 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence and restart talks.
Since Saudi King Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995, the crown prince has run the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom, the world's biggest oil producer and exporter.
Mr Solana said the prince stood by his idea of normalising Arab ties with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal from Arab land occupied since the 1967 Middle East war, first raised in an interview with the New York Times published last week.
But the envoy said Prince Abdullah wanted to discuss the details of that proposal with Arab leaders first "so that at the end of the process, that means by the 28th [of March when the Arab League summit ends], it could be approved unanimously by the leaders of the Arab world".
World leaders have latched onto the plan as a possible blueprint for defusing a Palestinian uprising against occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and it has been already been welcomed by some Arab states.
A Saudi official said earlier that the kingdom had yet to decide whether to present the plan formally at the Arab summit, adding that it depended on developments on the ground in Palestinian areas and consultations with other Arab countries.
Mr Solana, who had just visited Israel and the Palestinian territories, was due to discuss the initiative with Arab League chief Mr Amr Moussa last night and with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak today. He will then travel to Jordan for discussions with King Abdullah.
The initiative, a restatement of the principle on which Arab-Israeli peace talks were launched in 1991, has renewed hopes for defusing hostilities in which more than 1,100 people have been killed since September 2000.
Analysts said the plan's appeal lay in the idea of collective Arab recognition of Israel.
Israelis have been impressed because the plan came from Saudi Arabia, a past opponent of Arab normalisation with the Jewish state and a staunch advocate of Arab and Muslim claims to east Jerusalem.
The proposal's insistence on complete Israeli withdrawal will help rope in Arab states which reject normal ties with Israel as long as it occupies Arab land and denies Palestinians a chance to build an independent state.
So far, only Jordan and Egypt have signed peace deals with Israel. Other Arab states such as Oman and Qatar established trade ties in the euphoria after the 1991 Madrid conference but later froze them as peace prospects withered.
The Saudi proposal, not yet formally made, has won a cautious welcome in Israel and praise from the United States, Europe, the Palestinians and several Arab countries. Israeli and Palestinian radicals have expressed reservations.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has said he "appreciated and supported completely" Prince Abdullah's efforts. The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, was more reserved, telling Mr Solana that he was ready to meet Saudi officials to discuss the plan.
Diplomats said although the prince's putative offer holds little new, the fact that it has come from the secretive kingdom has allowed the various parties involved in peacemaking to treat it as a fresh starting point.