Sharon calls for Middle East peace summit

Israel’s prime minister Ariel Sharon has called for a Middle East peace conference led by the United States.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has accepted the idea conditionally, but an American official has said the proposal needs more work.

Sharon said that in his talks with Powell, he proposed a regional conference to discuss peace prospects and ways to rehabilitate the economy of the Palestinian areas, devastated by 18 months of conflict.

Speaking at a business gathering in Tel Aviv, Sharon said the United States would conduct the conference, to be attended by Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Palestinian representatives. A Sharon aide said Arafat would not take part.

Arafat expressed conditional acceptance of the idea. In a phone call to Fox News, he said, ‘‘I am ready for immediate conference, but at the same time, immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces.’’

A senior US official said the idea was discussed as part of a way to move forward politically, but more talks were needed.

Meanwhile, the International Red Cross hoped to enter the devastated Jenin refugee camp today to help search for bodies of dead Palestinians, said a Red Cross spokesman.

Yesterday the Israeli Supreme Court rejected an army plan to bury the bodies in an Israeli cemetery, ordering that they be returned to the Palestinians and that the Red Cross accompany the army efforts to gather the bodies.

Guiding reporters through the Jenin camp, scene of a bitter week-long battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen and bombers, Israeli army officers insisted that Palestinian claims of a massacre there were untrue.

The Israelis revised their estimate of dead downward to dozens, after saying earlier that about 100 were killed. Palestinians said that hundreds were killed in the camp. Soldiers said so far they had found 40 bodies, mostly gunmen.

Reporters were allowed to walk down the middle of camp streets, warned by soldiers that explosives still littered the area. The reporters, members of a pool allowed into the camp by the military, saw only one body, but soldiers said others were inside houses or buried under rubble.

There was widespread destruction in the camp, where tanks and bulldozers knocked over buildings in their street-to-street fight. In some places, rubble was piled two stories high, with pieces of furniture and personal possessions mixed with broken concrete.

The powerful stench of sewage mixed with rubbish strewn on the camp’s narrow alleyways. Many houses were empty, some with their front doors open.

Bullet casings littered the streets and alleyways, sitting in the midst of shattered glass and shards of rubble. Walls bore Hebrew letters and numbers, the work of the Israeli army to mark the roads. Alongside them were slogans of the militant Islamic group Hamas.

Some homes had their windows shut, but the sound of children playing and the aroma of baking bread wafted through, indicating that some people were still around.

Red Cross spokesman Uriel Masad said a rescue team was poised at the edge of the camp, waiting for army permission to enter. He said the Supreme Court ruling made it more likely that they would be allowed in today.

The Red Cross wanted to extend humanitarian services to the refugees as well as helping in the search for bodies, Masad said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.