JERUSALEM -- Trying to dampen strong U.S. criticism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that he has made no new demands on the Palestinians while suspending a West Bank pullback, his senior adviser said Friday.
Palestinian officials accused Netanyahu of creating a crisis to appease hard-liners and unite his shaky coalition, and vowed Friday to go ahead with their part of the Wye River peace accord.Friday night, the Palestinian Cabinet and the PLO Executive Committee were to discuss procedures for convening the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians' parliament-in-exile, on Dec. 14.
On that day, the PNC and the other groups are to "reaffirm" a letter to President Clinton in which Arafat declares that clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel's destructions are null and void.
Israel's security Cabinet had voted Wednesday to suspend a troop withdrawal in response to an ambush near the West Bank city of Ramallah, where rioting Palestinians attacked an Israeli car and beat its driver and his soldier passenger with rocks.
A Palestinian university student who participated in that attack and seized the soldier's M-16 assault rifle has been arrested, a senior Palestinian official said Friday.
Albright spoke with Netanyahu by phone Thursday to discuss the latest crisis, which came a week before Clinton's arrival Dec. 12 to oversee the second phase of the peace accord.
State Department spokesman James Rubin had criticized the Israeli suspension and called for implementation of the Wye River accord as signed.
After the Cabinet move, the hard-line National Religious Party announced it would withdraw its support for a bill to dissolve the parliament and call new elections.
David Bar Illan, Netanyahu's policy adviser, said the Israeli leader told Albright that Israel's conditions for renewing the handover of West Bank territory to the Palestinians were not new.
Netanyahu says he will only be satisfied by a public declaration by Arafat that the Palestinians are dropping plans to declare statehood in May and that they accept Israel's criteria for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Those prisoners plan to begin a hunger strike Saturday to press their demands for freedom.
Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon was to leave this weekend for meetings in Washington with Albright and senior Clinton administration officials.
In other developments today, Palestinians briefly clashed with Jewish settlers and Israeli troops in two land protests.
In one incident near the Jewish settlement of Ateret, about 50 Palestinians from the village of Umm Safa blocked an access road with rocks and a washing machine to protest the expropriation of village land.