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November 4, 2000 

WASHINGTON (AP) - With a truce taking hold, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is planning a post-election meeting with President Clinton at the White House, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is likely to come here as well.

The separate sessions would give Clinton another chance to try to promote a settlement between the two sides. But already deep mistrust has grown stronger in more than a month of violence on the West Bank, in Gaza and Israel, and Arafat has said Barak could ``go to hell'' unless he was ready to turn over East Jerusalem to the Palestinians. The truce was brokered by Clinton two weeks ago at an emergency summit meeting in Egypt, but it did not take hold right away as the bloodletting persisted.

Arafat tentatively plans to meet with Clinton next Wednesday or Thursday, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials. Barak's plans are less defined, but he also is expected to call on Clinton at the White House by week's end. Barak is scheduled to speak to a Jewish group in Chicago on Nov. 12.

At the White House, spokesman P.J. Crowley said ``the president hopes to see both leaders in the very near future'' to discuss how to implement the agreement reached at Sharm el-Sheik to stop the fighting and to ``discuss a way back to the negotiating process.''

``There will not be a three-way meeting'' of Clinton, Arafat and Barak, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said after meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and national security adviser Sandy Berger. Erekat said Arafat had issued two public statements calling for an end to the violence. And now, the negotiator said, ``We want to see the United States exert every possible effort on the peace process.'' He described his conversation with Albright as ``very candid,'' which in diplomatic jargon often means there were some rough spots. Albright has said repeatedly that Arafat could do more to stop the violence.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Albright and Erekat talked about the importance of carrying out the understandings reached in Egypt and how to build a bridge back to the peace process. ``What matters in terms of progress or lack thereof is what happens on the ground,'' Boucher said.

Erekat, meanwhile, said the Palestinians want ``international protection'' for their people and that Israel should pull back from refugee camps and other Palestinian concentrations. But he said that ``there was not that much enthusiasm'' at the White House about deploying international forces that are needed to protect Palestinians from Israel.

In Los Angeles, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish social action group, urged Clinton to delay any meeting with Arafat until ``all the terrorists and murderers that have been released'' from Palestinian prisons are put back in jail.