Aide: Barak maintains 'restraint,' hoping to restart talks

CHICAGO - Prime Minister Ehud Barak hopes to return to the Camp David understandings with the Palestinians and is maintaining a policy of restrained response to violence to secure another summit, a senior Israeli official said Monday.

Barak, under increasing political pressure to toughen his response to the Palestinians, has no intention of raising the stakes, said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Barak was determined to maintain an ''opening'' to return to the groundbreaking Camp David talks in July.

Gunmen ambushed three Israeli vehicles in separate attacks on Monday, killing four Israelis. More than 200 people have died in two months of violence, the vast majority Palestinians.

In a statement, Barak said he held Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority responsible for the killings, and that he had instructed security officials to take steps - although he did not outline those steps.

Barak had met with President Clinton on Sunday night. Aides present at the meeting said that Clinton wants another summit before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

Barak favors such a summit, but wants to see a ''drastic'' reduction in the violence before going - although he has told his advisers he realizes that Arafat cannot totally end it.

Arafat has also indicated that he would favor another summit, but he has his own conditions for going back to the table: a freeze on Jewish settlement, and a pullback of Israeli forces from the borders of Palestinian areas.

Both sides are ready to return to the breakthroughs they achieved at the Camp David summit in July as a starting point - although there would likely be differences on exactly where the summit left off.

At Camp David, Israel agreed for the first time to share Jerusalem and its holy walled Old City and to discuss the prospect of some Palestinian refugees returning to their homes. The Palestinians agreed to concede some lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war - the first time any Arab negotiators had done so.

Palestinians now want the United States and the Europeans to guarantee a return to the 1967 borders as a condition for rejoining talks.

Israel, too, was seeking outside guarantees before returning to the table: Barak has said he wants clear U.S. and European recognition of Israel's view that the Palestinians have initiated most of the violence.

The Camp David talks broke up over the issue of sovereignty over a Jerusalem shrine holy to Muslims and Jews. A Sept. 28 visit to that site by Ariel Sharon, a leader of Israel's hard-line opposition, sparked the current violence.

Sharon, who is also coming to Chicago to attend an annual assembly of Jewish leaders, lashed out at Barak for not taking a tougher line against the Palestinians.

Sharon, addressing a breakfast forum sponsored by the New York Post and attended by many of New York's Jewish community leaders, said Barak was wrong to seek only ''reductions'' in the violence.

''Reductions? It should be stopped completely,'' he said.

The Barak aide acknowledged that the violence had intensified in terms of the sophistication of Palestinian attacks but noted a significant drop in their number.

Israel also stepped up its strategy last week by assassinating a Palestinian militia leader in Bethlehem. Barak warned that more gunmen leaders could be targeted.

Barak appeared worn down by the intensity of recent events. He was in the air 22 hours out of 24 on Sunday as he delayed his meeting with Clinton to deal with a hijack crisis in Israel.

At the Jewish assembly in Chicago, he canceled all but one speaking engagement. Aides said he was losing his voice.

The meeting with Clinton had been relaxed and friendly. Clinton opened the meeting with the Israelis by joking about the recount in the Florida presidential vote.