Israelis plan mass demo at holy shrine

Bill Clinton is sending negotiator Dennis Ross to the Middle East for a last attempt to narrow differences blocking a peace deal.

Israeli and Palestinian officials are waiting for the outcome of a meeting in Cairo between their security chiefs and CIA boss George Tenet, which was called to try to stem the Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed that has claimed 360 lives.

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, Israelis are planning a mass protest over Bill Clinton's proposal that they give the Palestinians traditionally Arab east Jerusalem and sovereignty over a controversial holy site of Temple Mount, where the current conflict began three months' ago.

Police will deploy thousands of officers inside and around the walls of the Old City to keep order. Some 8,000 demonstrators have threatened to protest.

The chief guardian of an Islamic shrine at the site called the planned Old City rally "provocative." Adnan Husseini said he would hold police responsible for safeguarding the shrine and the Old City's Arab population.

The dispute over who will control the holy site - known as Haram as-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, to Muslims and Temple Mount to Jews - is one of the main stumbling blocks preventing a final peace agreement.

It was the visit by hard-line Israeli opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, on September 28 to the compound that touched off Palestinian protests, growing to the near-daily Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Many Arabs saw Sharon's visit, under heavy police guard, as asserting Israel's ultimate claim to a site it has left in day-to-day Palestinian control.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak, struggling for support for his peace efforts and his own trailing re-election race against Sharon, has sworn he will never sign any deal that turns sovereignty of Temple Mount over to the Palestinians.

The latest demonstration was called by the One Jerusalem group of Natan Sharansky, head of an immigrants party that pulled out of Barak's government in protest of peace efforts.