Mideast talks hope after 'shuttle diplomacy'

After a round of shuttle diplomacy by the new US Mideast envoy, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to resume talks on security cooperation today, but the scope of the negotiations wasn’t clear.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer suggested that the security talks resume, perhaps in a few days, spokesman Yarden Vatikai said.

Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath, however, said the talks would cover both security as well as political issues, such as putting together a plan for implementing recommendations from an international commission and from an Egyptian-Jordanian initiative.

Israel has said it wouldn’t resume political negotiations while Palestinian violence continued. The Palestinian side has said security and political issues must be discussed as a package.

With such discrepancies between the two sides, it wasn’t clear how in-depth the talks would be or what specifically would be covered.

U. envoy William Burns, making the Bush administration’s first foray into shuttle diplomacy, was to resume talks with both sides after initial meetings Sunday with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.