Summit Conferences

As Hamas vowed to carry out more suicide bombings in defiance of this week's world summit against terrorism, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met Saturday with senior CIA officials to discuss how to combat the Islamic extremists. Arafat spoke for about an hour with the CIA delegation headed by Deputy Director George J. Tenet at an office near the Erez checkpoint, on the border between Israel and the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip.

When the nation's governors concluded a historic summit on education seven years ago, there was optimism in the air. Led by then-President George Bush, Republican and Democratic leaders agreed to set national goals to lift America's abysmal performance in core academic areas. Establishing tough national standards for what all students should know was a fresh idea. And Bush, who called himself the "Education President," promised a more vigorous federal role.

As an American-sponsored effort to persuade the United States' allies to provide arms and training for the Bosnian government fell flat Friday, Russia announced that it will boycott a meeting on Bosnia called for Monday by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

Bolstered by a clear mandate the day after winning Taiwan's first fully democratic election, the new government said Sunday that it is willing to resume talks with China but that the next step toward reconciliation is up to Beijing. "We should pursue a policy of detente . . . based on the principles of equality and goodwill," Taiwanese Prime Minister Lien Chan said. "The most important thing is to work together with China to abandon the zero-sum mentality."

Ten years ago this week, the Reykjavik summit on nuclear disarmament between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev looked like a miserable failure: After hammering out tentative agreements on missile cutbacks, Gorbachev suddenly demanded that the United States stop work on the anti-missile Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan refused. And both sides went home from Iceland grumbling.

Eighteen Pacific Rim governments Monday endorsed sweeping tariff reductions by 2000 in the $1-trillion information technology industry and agreed to push forward with voluntary efforts to liberalize trade and investment opportunities in the region. The commitment on tariff reductions came only after some carefully targeted personal lobbying by President Clinton here at the fourth summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, known as APEC.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, apparently determined to overcome the bitter animosity generated by a week of deadly combat, talked for more than three hours Tuesday in the opening of a U.S.-brokered Mideast summit.

The deadly triumph of Taliban rebels in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has frightened Russia and former Soviet republics in Central Asia, prodding nervous leaders who once backed a Communist regime in Afghanistan to call Tuesday for action to halt at their borders the spread of bloodshed and radical Islam.

Saiteer Salhab peered out from the second-story balcony of the house where he was born and, as a Palestinian, has been locked under Israeli curfew for the last six days. He watched the buses of Jewish tourists speed down the block to the Cave of the Patriarchs for the Sukkot holiday.

The differences could not be greater between the current Middle East summit in Washington and the euphoric meeting of Arab and Israeli leaders here three years ago that launched the now-troubled peace process. The earlier one was a celebration that floated on a giddy feeling of hope and success. This week's meeting is spattered in blood and spawned by despair.