Britain says Israel spurns Palestinian talks plea

Britain said yesterday Israel had rebuffed Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal plea to let Palestinians attend Middle East peace talks in London next week but vowed that dialogue would go ahead "in one form or another".

In a sign of growing tension, Blair's spokesman said Israel had delivered its response after postponing a planned meeting between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Britain's ambassador.

The diplomatic stand-off follows a testy telephone call between Israeli and British foreign ministers on Monday in which, according to a transcript, each said the other's stance on the conference was hindering prospects for peace.

"We have heard from Prime Minister Sharon's office -- although the ambassador has not yet got in to see him," the spokesman said. "The Israeli position remains unchanged."

Britain had said its ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles would deliver a letter to Sharon from Blair on Wednesday stressing the importance of letting the January 14 conference on peace and Palestinian reforms go ahead.

It had hoped talks bringing together Palestinians with the "quartet" of UN, EU, Russian and U.S. negotiators, could be a step to reviving Israeli-Palestinian talks stymied by two years of violence. But Israel said talk of reform was futile as long as President Yasser Arafat still ran the Palestinian Authority.

On Monday, after Sunday's twin suicide bombings which killed 22 people in Tel Aviv, Sharon said Palestinians would not be allowed to travel to London.

"We are committed to the dialogue going ahead in some form," Blair's spokesman told reporters. "And it will go ahead in some form as soon as possible and within the original timescale."

The spokesman did not elaborate and refused to comment on British media reports that Blair might try and get round the travel ban by holding a conference by video phone.

Blair, who lead's Britain's Labour party, later met Israeli Labour leader Amram Mitzna, Sharon's main challenger in a January 28 election. The meeting was unlikely to improve relations between the two governments.

Mitzna told reporters after the talks that he and Blair had agreed on the need to revive Middle East peace talks -- a move Sharon rejects while Israeli-Palestinian clashes continue.

"We both agreed that there is a necessity to resume negotiations, side by side with fighting terrorism...to try again to give another chance to resume negotiation," he said.

But he offered little support for Blair's planned talks next week: "I can understand why Prime Minister Sharon is taking such a decision after the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv just a few days ago. It is very difficult...to back Palestinians that are not even trying to fight terrorism."

Blair has set great personal store behind refloating the peace process since touring Middle Eastern capitals after the September 11 attacks on the United States, when he was left in no doubt about the strength of Arab feeling on the issue and the degree of dissatisfaction with Israel and its main U.S. ally.

Presenting himself as a conciliator in a speech on Tuesday, Blair urged other nations, including Arabs, to back the United States' hard line against Iraq but also made an implicit appeal to Washington to do more to ease the plight of the Palestinians.

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