The Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram floated a multi-track approach to stop escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence by urging both sides to resume direct talks under a six-month period of calm.The editor in chief of Al-Ahram, Ibrahim Nafie, who is considered close to President Hosni Mubarak, wrote that "a general explosion must be prevented" and that only direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians can work.

"Experience has shown that the great powers cannot negotiate in the place of the parties on the ground," Nafie wrote in a front-page editorial.

The more than two-year-old Palestinian uprising, or intifada, has raged on despite recent peace moves by the diplomatic quartet on the Middle East -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

He urged Israelis and Palestinians "to break the infernal cycle by defining a complete vision while also restoring calm, reforming the Palestinian Authority and negotiating."

Nafie stressed it "is not healthy to stagger the implementation of these three goals, such as putting the restoration of calm first, then starting the reform of the Authority and finally negotiating.

"Since the return to calm is the most important and difficult question, I propose that it takes place with the guarantee of outside parties."

It was not immediately clear whether the Egyptian government had formally presented such a proposal to the Israeli government, with which diplomatic contact has been reduced to a minimum during the prolonged crisis.

He proposed "calm for a period of six months, with the Arab countries guaranteeing it is respected by the Palestinians and the United States guaranteeing it is respected by the Israelis."

"The process of reform could be pursued at the same time, without it being placed as a condition for the resumption of negotiations and Israel would meanwhile lift all the obstacles imposed on the Palestinian people, and would turn over to the Palestinian Authority the funds owed it and which are blocked," he said.

Nafie urged both sides to "start immediately applying" the proposal, without waiting for Israel's elections on January 28, for which he said opinion polls showed there was little chance of the dovish left-wing beating Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hardline government.

He feared "the Israeli government's failure to establish security, forces it to exploit international circumstances which it deems propitious to intensify its aggression against the Palestinian people."

PHOTO CAPTION

Hosni Mubarak