Arab leaders agreed on Tuesday to relaunch a Middle East peace initiative offering Israel normal relations in return for withdrawal to its 1967 borders, officials said at a summit meeting in Algiers.But all 22 members of the Arab League have agreed to a final communique which sets out the conditions Israel must meet for all Arab states to declare the Arab-Israeli conflict over. Jordanian Foreign Minister Hani al-Mulki told Reuters that the final communique had been approved and was to be officially endorsed yesterday. Jordan was the driving force behind the relaunch, designed to show Israeli and international public opinion that the Arab states have peaceful intentions.

But Israel said on Monday that the plan was a ?non-starter? and Arab states should start negotiations without conditions. Washington?s response was lukewarm.? The United States, as a matter of policy, supports ?as broad a recognition of Israel as possible,? State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said.But asked why the US was not speaking supportively of the Arab proposal, Ereli said: ?I?m not speaking nonsupportively of it. I?m just saying that I?m not aware that this proposal right now is going anywhere.?

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters that the Arab summit would send a small group of Arab leaders to present the plan to the Quartet of international mediators ? the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia.The US, which dominates the Quartet, favors the Israeli position that Israel and its neighbors should fix borders through negotiations.Mulki said earlier that asking the summit to restate the peace initiative was having the effect Jordan wanted. ?It has stirred things up. The whole world now remembers that there is an Arab peace initiative,? he told reporters. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, a guest at the opening, said he saw a change in the Arab position. ?It (the initiative) is most constructive, (more) than ever before. I think there is movement. We cannot forget where the previous positions of the Arab League were,? he said.

<B>Refugees to return home

Jordan had tried to simplify the 2002 initiative, adopted at an Arab summit in Beirut, to make it more appealing to Israeli and international public opinion.But the other Arab countries insisted on spelling out in detail the conditions Israel must meet ? including withdrawal, a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

Opposition to any substantial amendment stemmed from Arab suspicions that Israel would try to obtain normal relations with Arab countries without giving anything in return. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told the opening session of the summit that this should not happen. ?Israel still imagines that rights will be forgotten ... (and) that the Arabs will normalize relations with it without any equivalent worth mentioning. It cannot happen without something real in return,? he said.

?It?s a clear message that there is no normalisation before Israel takes all the measures required of it,? he said. But Algerian President Bouteflika, the chairman of the summit, said that faced with the attitude of Israel the Arabs must show the world their peaceful intentions. ?We must make the international community, the conscience of the world and the Jewish people itself bear witness to the strategic nature of the Arab option for peace,? he said. The attendance at the meeting, at 13 monarchs and presidents from the 22 Arab League members, is about average for Arab summits, which Gulf Arab rulers often skip.

<B>Suleiman AL-KHALIDI</>