THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

Scheduled Israel-Palestine peace talks are in doubt Sharon said to urge Peres to halt plans By Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, 9/15/2001 JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel instructed Foreign Minister Shimon Peres yesterday to cancel plans to hold truce talks with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat tomorrow, a senior Israeli political source said. But Peres, in remarks on Israel television, said he would continue to press Sharon to meet Arafat. Failure to maintain a dialogue with Arafat, Peres suggested, could harm US efforts to rally Arab nations to its call for an international alliance to fight terrorism following Tuesday's attacks in the United States. ''The Americans want Muslim and Arab elements in this coalition, and if the Palestinian issue can be shunted to the side or solved - that's important to them,'' Peres said, noting that US Secretary of State Colin Powell was pushing for the talks. Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo accused Sharon of vetoing the meeting so he could ''continue his terrorist war'' against the Palestinian people. ''We were prepared to hold the meeting on Sunday,'' Abed Rabbo said. Earlier in the day, a senior Israeli political official said, ''Sharon told Peres not to meet Arafat Sunday because the timing of the talks would hurt Israel.'' He apparently was referring to the terror attacks in the United States and Sharon's biting comments the next day about Arafat. Meanwhile, fresh violence erupted in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian, and Palestinian militants threatened more suicide attacks against Israel. In a separate incident, two paramilitary border policemen were wounded by hand grenades thrown near the Erez Crossing point between Israel and Gaza, the army said. Later in the day, Israeli tanks entered the town of Beit Hanoun, triggering an exchange of fire. In Gaza's Nusairat refugee camp, about 1,500 supporters of the militant Hamas group took part in an anti-Israel rally. Holding aloft pictures of Mohammed Ihbeishi, an Arab-Israeli suicide bomber, they called on Arafat to spurn talks with Israel and warned of further attacks. Ihbeishi killed three Israelis and himself in an attack on a train station in northern Israel Sunday. Palestinian police confiscated still photographs of the rally and television footage shot by Western news agencies. Israel sent tanks into the West Bank cities of Jenin and Jericho this week. Israel said the raids were intended to root out Palestinian militants after a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks. This story ran on page A20 of the Boston Globe on 9/15/2001. © Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.