Ehud Barak the frontrunner to succeed Shimon Peres as party leader called on Mr Netanyahu to stop the dangerous

Ehud Barak, the frontrunner to succeed Shimon Peres as party leader, called on Mr Netanyahu to stop the dangerous escalation and resume normal contacts with leaders of the Arab world."It is very disturbing," Mr Barak said, "the way we are isolating ourselves with this policy of destroying the mutual confidence so intricately nurtured by the late Yitzhak Rabin and by Shimon Peres."The Clinton administration's Middle East peace envoy, Dennis Ross, left empty-handed last week, but there are reports that the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, is planning to bring a new compromise formula on her first official visit to the region.That visit promises to be more and more difficult, as each day passes. The Arab League's recommendation to freeze Arab-Israeli relations and reimpose a trade boycott may sound like familiar rhetoric, but it is a further symbol of the ever-quickening decay of the American-Israeli "peace process". No one could have imagined, even a year ago, that Arab foreign ministers would be voting to return to the Middle East cold war - and Washington's continuing refusal to understand the depth of betrayal now felt by Arab kings and dictators will only allow the crisis in the region to deteriorate at a faster rate.Every day brings a further crack in the crumbling edifice of the "peace process" in which the world was once asked to believe and to invest millions of dollars. Farouk al-Sharaa, the Syrian foreign minister, insisted that the Arab League's decision was intended to persuade Israeli public opinion to make Mr Netanyahu reconsider his decision to build a new Jewish settlement on occupied land; in truth, only America can do that - and two US vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions condemning the settlement prove this is a vain hope.What, in any case, is a cold peace with the Arabs worth to Israel? In Egypt, for example, ElAl cannot even fly into Cairo with its name on aircraft Tour-ism between Israel and Egypt has virtually collapsed. In Jordan, King Hussein's horror at the murder by a Jordanian soldier of seven Israeli schoolchildren has not been matched by his people.

The Jordanian Bar Association has been overwhelmed with lawyers offering to defend the soldier responsible for the slaughter. The king has since replaced his Prime Minister with the man who signed the peace treaty with Israel, further isolating himself from the Palestinian population.The Arab League's recommendation to break off multilateral talks with Israel on water, economic cooperation, refugees, the environment and disarmament further destroys one of the dwindling American hopes of a continued "peace process". The original "land-for-peace" deal promised the Arabs before the 1991 Madrid summit in a series of letters from then Secretary of State James Baker - which the European Union wholeheartedly supported - has effectively been torn up. Very dark days, therefore, appear to lie ahead.Europe can save peace, page 14. The Front National leader, Jean-Marie le Pen, yesterday called for abolition of the Fifth Republic created by de Gaulle and its replacement by a Sixth Republic which would defend French "national identity" as the standard-bearer for nationalist movements throughout the world. In his closing speech to the 10th FN congress in Strasbourg, he threatened to counter-attack against allegations that he and his party are fascist, racist and anti-Semitic.

This campaign of vilification was a strategy by the "corrupt" establishment parties, and the "professional anti-racism lobby" to undermine the only party capable of providing France with hope of a glorious future. The speech, touted as the opening broadside in the FN campaign for parliamentary elections next year, contained most of the standard Le Pen themes: the decadence of the establishment; the US-led plot to impose a global economy and culture; and efforts to traduce his party as a prelude, he claimed, to a legal ban.The chief novelty was Mr Le Pen's attempt to take on the mantle of de Gaulle and call for complete renewal of all political institutions. De Gaulle, who gave up Algeria, remains a villain to many on the ultra-right. But Mr Le Pen claimed him as a forerunner of his self-proclaimed mission and "historic duty" to rescue France from immobility and corruption.A few years after being regarded as a pariah and failure, de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic in 1958, Mr Le Pen said "This is a historic model that many should ponder ... Vive the Sixth Republic!"Although the FN has called for constitutional change, without giving many details, this was the first time Mr Le Pen had directly appealed for a completely new beginning for political institutions.But there were two sobering developments for Mr Le Pen yesterday. Four FN members were arrested after roughing up two young men in a hotel car- park. Three of the Frontistses, security guards at the congress, had claimed to be policemen.