U.S. Envoy to Meet Israeli, Palestinian Leaders

WASHINGTON —  President Clinton has asked U.S. negotiator Dennis B. Ross to return to the Middle East for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, a White House official announced Tuesday.

“The president has asked Ambassador Dennis Ross to travel to the Middle East . . . for consultations on the peace process,” White House spokeswoman Mary Ellen Glynn said.

Glynn said Ross will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat before returning to Washington by the weekend.

After accepting a telephone call from Secretary of State Madeleine Albright requesting that he meet with the U.S. envoy, Arafat agreed to return to the Middle East from his current tour of Asia.

Ross is credited with helping to overcome differences between Israel and the Palestinians earlier this year on an Israeli military redeployment from most of the West Bank city of Hebron.

But the situation has deteriorated since then. Arafat rejected Israel’s next offer to pull back troops within the West Bank as inadequate, Netanyahu went ahead with a Jewish housing project in East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian carried out a suicide attack on a Tel Aviv cafe, killing three women and injuring scores of people.