Israel's Peres plans to meet with Arafat

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres plans to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to try to end more than a month of clashes, an adviser to Peres said on Tuesday.

But the adviser, Yoram Dori, told Reuters: "I can tell you that up until now no meeting has been fixed."

Israeli spokesman Nachman Shai had said earlier that the meeting would take place on Tuesday or Wednesday and that Peres had discussed his plans with Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Shai said Peres was one of the last Israelis able to talk properly to Arafat and added: "There is no chemistry between Arafat and Barak. He (Arafat) does not like Barak. He does not trust him."

Peres is now Minister of Regional Cooperation. He and Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 after they and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin negotiated the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

More than 160 people have been killed in almost five weeks of clashes, almost all of them Palestinians or Israeli Arabs.

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