Deadly Riots In West Bank

A Palestinian demonstrator was killed by Israeli troops during clashes in the divided West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday, hospital officials said.

Amjad al-Natshe, 21, was hit in the head with a rubber-coated metal bullet and died in a hospital, they said. Clashes erupted when Palestinian youths pelted Israeli soldiers with stones across the city's divide.

Witnesses said Natshe, who lives in Jordan, had been in Hebron visiting his family.

The clash erupted just a day after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to secure agreements for an Oct. 15 summit in Washington.

At least 20 other Palestinians were hurt in the riots, witnesses said. They included a Palestinian photographer for the French news agency, Agence France Presse, who was seriously wounded when he was shot in the head with a rubber bullet.

Doctors at a Hebron hospital said they had operated on the photographer, Husam Abu Allam, to try to stabilize his condition.

The Israeli army said it was investigating the circumstances of the incident.

Before leaving the Mideast for NATO briefings in Brussels, Albright announced Wednesday that an Oct. 15 summit would be held in Washington to try to work out agreement on a West Bank accord.

"We made significant progress," she said after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

In fact, Albright told reporters, "We are in a far better position to finalize all the issues" needed to conclude an agreement on the West Bank.

Progress had been hinted at earlier with a change in schedule. Netanyahu and Arafat continued their two-hour morning talks over lunch with Albright.

CBS News State Department Correspondent Charles Wolfson reports that original plans had called for Netanyahu to leave and for Albright to lunch alone with Arafat.

The negotiations also moved from the Israeli side of the checkpoint to the Palestinian guesthouse on the other side of the border.

Arafat and Netanyahu were even alone - for the first time in more than a year - when Albright left the room where she was meeting with the two men. Albright is trying to narrow the differences between the Israelis and Palestinians over a West Bank troop withdrawal.

The three-way meeting took place in close quarters. Albright, Netanyahu, and Arafat sat around a square table so small their knees and elbows were almost touching.

Posing for photographers, Netanyahu and Arafat shook hands across the table and then Albright placed her hand on top of theirs.

Albright's spokesman, James P. Rubin, said Albright faced dozens of hurdles in her second day of Mideast peacemaking.

Whatever the outcome, Albright said the United States intends to pursue a better relationship with the Palestinian Authority "for its own sake."

"We have thought for some time about increasing the level of iscourse," she said.

But she declined to say whether the administration was setting the stage for dealing ultimately with a Palestinian state.