ARABS-ISRAEL - Sept. 8 - Widow Of Rabin Slams Reported Barak Concessions.

Leah Rabin, widow of assassinatedPM Yitzhak Rabin, says her husband would never have offered Palestinians control over parts of the Old City of Jerusalem, as PM Barak reportedly has done. She tells 'Yediot Ahranot' daily: "Yitzhak is spinning in his grave". (Rabin started the peace process with the Palestinians. His widow's remarks are likely to inspire Israeli hard-liners, who oppose Barak's proposed concessions to the Palestinians. Rabin was gunned down in 1995 by an opponent of his peace policies after he became the 1st Israeli premier to shake the hand of Palestinian leader Arafat, reviled as a terrorist until he signed an interim peace accord with Rabin's government in 1993. Barak has reportedly offered Arafat sovereignty in Arab neighbourhoods and control of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, while Israel would have sovereignty on the Temple Mount, where the biblical Jewish Temples stood. The hill, known to Muslims as Haram As-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, is the site of the Islamic Dome of the Rock shrine and the Al Aqsa mosque. Arafat demands full Palestinian sovereignty there. Peace talks are stalemated over the issue, which caused the failure of a July summit between Arafat and Barak in the US.)

Leah Rabin says concessions in Jerusalem were a taboo for her husband, who fought in the 1948 war that followed Israel's creation and watched as Israeli forces lost the Old City and its Jewish residents were taken captive. She says: "He was thankful that in 1967 he was the army chief of staff who liberated it". (Israel captured the Old City, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. Barak is in New York attending the UN Millennium Summit. Pres. Clinton met separately with Barak and Arafat but failed to achieve a breakthrough in the stalled talks.) Leah Rabin criticises the way Barak is handling the negotiations. She says Barak should not have gone into crucial talks with Arafat before repairing the personal relationship between the 2 leaders, which she says had been strained for months. She says the peace process Rabin started was designed to build trust and good will, but that has not happened, adding that despite Barak's claims, he is not Rabin's spiritual successor. The widow ridicules Arafat's reported offer of Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, while the Palestinians rule the rest of Jerusalem, including Muslim, Christian and Jewish holy sites. She says: "They are prepared to let us pray at the Western Wall. Isn't that beyond belief"?