JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat ruled out going to an Arab summit expected to endorse a new plan for peace with Israel.
Shortly before, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said "conditions were not ripe" for lifting a travel ban imposed on Arafat in December after a spate of Palestinian Resistance bombings in an 18-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation.
Arafat, who had earlier hoped to attend the Beirut summit which begins on Wednesday, announced he would stay put because Israeli preconditions for freeing him from confinement in the West Bank city of Ramallah were unacceptable.
Palestinian officials said Arafat would speak to the opening session of the two-day summit by video hookup from Ramallah.
They said Israel's insistence on the right to veto his return from the summit was the most objectionable condition. Other Israeli terms included a firm cease-fire and arrest of Palestinian Resistance leaders for past attacks on Israelis.
Arafat would also have run the risk of Israel blocking his return to the Palestinian territories, part of which were handed to Palestinian rule under interim deals in the 1990s, if it judged anything he said in Beirut to be "incitement."
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had advised Arafat not to go to the summit.
Mubarak dealt a further blow to the Arab summit when his aides announced that he himself would not attend because of "domestic commitments."
But Arafat's absence is likely to be the focus of the Beirut meeting even though Arab leaders were still expected to endorse the Saudi plan.

PHOTO CAPTION:
Palestinian demonstrators hold the flags of the Arab countries attending the Arab summit in Beirut, as they demonstarte in front of the destroyed offices of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the Gaza Strip March 26, 2002. Israel said Tuesday Palestinian President Yasser Arafat had not met its conditions for attending the summit, but left the door open for a last-minute decision to let him go. Photo by Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters