JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) -Following a number of separate meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, German foreign minister Joschka Fischer Tuesday was given Washington's approval for his efforts to bring the two parties to the negotiating table to pump life into a still born truce initiative known in mideast conflict jargon as the Mitchel plan. (Read photo caption below)

A spokesman said Fischer briefed the United States and European Union on his talks. The United States, traditionally chief broker in Middle East peacemaking, welcomed the remarks.
``There's an initiative under way and the United States is supportive of any initiative that the parties undertake themselves,'' U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Reuters.
However, Israelis and Palestinians played down peace prospects even though Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres agreed in principle to meet to discuss ending 11 months of a Palestininian uprising against Israeli occupation.Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon separately met visiting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer Tuesday, who has taken on a role as a Middle East mediator.
Arafat said after his first of two meetings with Fischer that he was prepared to meet Peres in Berlin ``at any moment.''
Peres, who met Fischer Monday but is now in the Hungarian capital Budapest, said he intended to see Arafat -- whom he met in June and July with little outcome -- ``in the near future.''
No date was set and, with Peres already abroad and Arafat due to visit China from Thursday, next week appeared to be the earliest opportunity for talks.
But political analysts from both camps were downbeat on chances for a breakthrough between the sides, locked in 11 months of violence in a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Late Tuesday, a familiar routine of West Bank gun battles between Israeli occupation soldiers and Palestinian Resistance resumed in the predominantly Palestinian city of Hebron, Al-Khalil.
Hospital sources said four Palestinians were wounded as heavy firing raged. In Gaza, Palestinians launched the latest in a series of retaliatory mortar attacks on Israel.
``It could be that this attempt by Peres is the last effort before there is a serious escalation (in Israel's brutal reaction to the Palestinian uprising against occupation),'' Israeli political commentator Chemi Shalev said.
Palestinian analyst Ghassan al-Khatib was similarly pessimistic about a fresh round of talks with Peres, who is pursuing ``new ideas'' for a phased cease-fire as a prelude to implementing an internationally backed truce-to-talks plan.
``I don't think there is any chance (of success) because the problem is not the lack of meetings or contacts. The problem has to do with the differences in positions and practices,'' al-Khatib said.
LIMITED BRIEF FOR PERES
Since Sharon has ruled out peace talks until there is a complete halt to the intifadha (uprising), Peres' brief is limited.
Sharon has given his dovish minister the go-ahead to hold high-level dialogue on trying to revive a stillborn truce agreed in June, but granted him no leeway to renew political talks.
Following his meeting with Sharon in Jerusalem, Fischer returned to the Palestinian-ruled West Bank city of Ramallah for a second, unscheduled meeting with Arafat.According to a senior Israeli political source, he carried a message from Sharon saying ``Israel will not tolerate any further shooting at neighborhoods in Jerusalem from the Palestinian Authority. If such shooting occurs, Israel will take all necessary measures to stop it immediately.''
Afterward, Fischer told reporters that Peres was authorized to discuss ``improving conditions in the territories and the reduction of, what is called, ' the violence.'''
In his own comments to reporters, Arafat noted that nothing materialized from a handful of previous meetings with Peres.
``We met him in Athens, Lisbon and Egypt although nothing came out of those meetings, and we will not stop these meetings hoping that something will come out of it,'' he said.
Peres and Arafat -- partners in a Nobel prize for the 1993 Oslo interim peace deals -- met in Lisbon on June 29 and in Cairo on July 15, but failed both times to make a breakthrough.
TRUCE TALKS AND BOMBS
Dore Gold, a senior Sharon advisor, also dampened hopes in a CNN interview: ``Another try is always helpful, but we at the same time understand that it's difficult to go forward.''
He said the meeting could ``clarify the terms of the cease-fire'' and that easing an Israeli blockade on Palestinian areas might be on the agenda.
Fischer was in Israel in June when 21 people were killed in a Resistance bombing by the Palestinian Islamic Resistance group Hamas at a Tel Aviv discotheque. He helped secure a U.S.-backed truce that never took hold.
Almost 700 people, including more than 520 Palestinians and about 150 Israelis, have been killed in the intifadha confrontations that began last September after peace talks stalled.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer meet in Arafat's office in Ramallah, August 21,2001. Arafat said he was ready to meet Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in Berlin 'at any moment' in efforts to end nearly 11 months of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation (Osama Silwadi/Reuters)