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BERLIN – The Israeli and Palestinian leaders are likely to hold their first meeting in the coming weeks, both sides indicated Wednesday, in what would be an important step toward a formal resumption of peace talks and a signal achievement for President Barack Obama.
The indications came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held four hours of talks with Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, in London on Wednesday. Mitchell has been pressing Israel to halt construction of West Bank settlements as a confidence-building gesture toward the Palestinians, and the issue has turned into an unusually public disagreement between the two allies.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has said he would not resume peace talks until Israel freezes settlements, and reiterated that position in a speech Wednesday. But the Israelis have been strongly hinting that Netanyahu could meet Abbas next month at the U.N. General Assembly, and on Wednesday, Palestinian officials in the West Bank said for the first time that such a meeting was likely.
The officials said that while Abbas is prepared to talk to Netanyahu, he would not officially reopen negotiations until Israel halts its settlement activities. They spoke on condition of anonymity because nothing has been formally scheduled.
A first meeting between the two leaders, even if it did not include substantive talks, would be an important symbolic step toward the reopening of negotiations that have been suspended since shortly before Netanyahu took office in March.
Israel and the U.S. have been hinting that they are close to an agreement that would allow the resumption of peace talks. But in a joint statement released by the State Department in Washington after the meeting between Netanyahu and Mitchell, the two men said only that they had "made good progress" in talks and that they "agreed on the importance of restarting meaningful negotiations."
Speaking to reporters later in the day in Berlin, the next stop on Netanyahu's four-day trip to Europe, the Israeli leader said he and Mitchell had made "certain progress."
"There were discussions that moved us ahead in the process, but there are still issues that haven't been agreed upon," Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu has said he wants a compromise that would allow Israel to continue with some settlement construction while at the same time restarting peace talks with the Palestinians.
It is unclear what sort of compromise would be acceptable to the Americans or to the Palestinians. Netanyahu said his representatives would be meeting with Mitchell in the U.S. next week and that the U.S. envoy was due back in Israel within several weeks.
The Palestinians and the international community consider settlements to be obstacles to peace. Some 300,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 180,000 Israelis living in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state.
Netanyahu has said he sees the spotlight on settlements as unfair and insisted the Mideast conflict is rooted in a deep Arab enmity toward Israel that predates them. Israeli officials say Netanyahu expects the Arab world to make goodwill gestures to Israel in exchange for a settlement freeze.
The subject of settlements was also sure to be raised at his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday.
German government spokesman Klaus Vater said that Berlin backs a two-state solution and, pending that, advocates that "no further settlements be built in the occupied areas."
A poll released Wednesday in Israel showed freezing settlements would be an unpopular move. Almost two-thirds of those questioned told pollsters they opposed a freeze, even in return for moves by Arab countries toward normalization of ties with Israel. Thirty-nine percent said they would support a freeze in return for Arab gestures.
Conducted by the Maagar Mohot polling company, the survey questioned 506 Jewish Israelis and had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
The issue has come to overshadow Israel's ties with the U.S and much of the international community since Netanyahu took power with a hardline government and Obama indicated that years of reluctant U.S. tolerance for settlement construction had ended.
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Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank contributed to this story.

BRUSSELS – The International Federation of Journalists complained Wednesday that news people covering the war in Afghanistan are being monitored by the U.S. military to see if they are sympathetic to the American cause.
The federation said journalists seeking to travel under the protection of U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan may be screened first by an American public relations firm to see if their coverage portrays the military in a positive light.
"This profiling of journalists further compromises the independence of media," Aidan White, general secretary of the Brussels-based federation, said in a statement.
"It strips away any pretense that the army is interested in helping journalists to work freely," the federation statement said.
The complaint followed the publication Aug. 24 of an article in the Stars and Stripes, an independent daily covering the U.S. military, reporting that journalists were being screened by The Rendon Group, a Washington-based public relations company.
The article said the company "gained notoriety" before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq "for collaborating with the Iraqi National Congress," an opposition group "reportedly funded by the CIA (that) furnished much of the false information about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion."
A U.S. military spokeswoman in Kabul said the Rendon reports were only used to ascertain what a journalist's specific interests might be.
"What is important to note is that we do not deny access to journalists wishing to cover operations in Afghanistan based on the tenor of their reporting," said Lt.Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker. "That has never been (Pentagon) policy; in fact it's the exact opposite."
"Whether their coverage in the past has been positive or negative is a non-factor," Sidenstricker said in a telephone interview.
American affiliates of the international journalists federation joined in protesting the screening.
Roberta Reardon, President of the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, whose members include broadcast journalists said: "If the military pre-approves only certain journalists to report a specific point of view or agenda, our decisions cannot be made independently or freely, and that threatens our democracy."
Bernie Lunzer, president of the Newspaper Guild, called the screening of journalists "over the line" and said it erodes "the ability to report the truth objectively and without government censorship."
The International Federation of Journalists represents over 600,000 journalists in 123 countries.
On the Net:
http://www.ifj.org/en

NEW YORK – Author Dominick Dunne, who told stories of shocking crimes among the rich and famous through his magazine articles and best-selling books including "Another City, Not My Own," about O.J. Simpson's murder trial, died Wednesday in his home at age 83.
Dunne's son, Griffin Dunne, said in a statement released by Vanity Fair magazine that his father had been battling bladder cancer. But the cancer had not prevented Dunne from working and socializing, his twin passions.
In September 2008, against his doctor's orders and his family's wishes, Dunne flew to Las Vegas to attend Simpson's kidnap-robbery trial, a postscript to his coverage of the football great's 1995 murder trial, which spiked Dunne's considerable fame.
In the past year, Dunne had traveled to Germany and the Dominican Republic for experimental stem cell treatments to fight his cancer. He wrote that he and actress Farrah Fawcett were in the same clinic in Bavaria but didn't see each other. Fawcett, a 1970s sex symbol and TV star of "Charlie's Angels," died in June at age 62.
Dunne discontinued his Vanity Fair column to concentrate on finishing another novel, "Too Much Money," which is to come out in December. He also made a number of appearances to promote a documentary film about his life, "After the Party," which was being released on DVD.
Dunne, who lived in Manhattan, was beginning to write his memoirs and until recently had posted messages on his Web site commenting on events in his life and thanking his fans for their support.
Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter praised Dunne as a gifted reporter who proved as fascinating as the people he wrote about.
"Anyone who remembers the sight of O.J. Simpson trying on the famous glove probably remembers a bespectacled Dunne, resplendent in his trademark Turnbull & Asser monogrammed shirt, on the court bench behind him," Carter wrote in a statement released Wednesday. "It is fair to say that the halls of Vanity Fair will be lonelier without him and that, indeed, we will not see his like anytime soon, if ever again."
Earlier this summer, Dunne was well enough to attend a Manhattan party hosted by Tina Brown. Chatting with an Associated Press reporter, he spoke of Michael Jackson, who recently had died, and remembered lunching with the singer and Elizabeth Taylor. Jackson was so excited to see her, Dunne said, he presented her with a diamond necklace just for the occasion.
Dunne was part of a famous family that also included his brother, novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne; his brother's wife, author Joan Didion; and his son Griffin.
A one-time movie producer, Dunne carved a new career starting in the 1980s as a chronicler of the problems of the wealthy and powerful.
Tragedy struck his life in 1982 when his actress daughter, Dominique Dunne, was slain — and that experience informed his later fiction and journalistic efforts.
"If you go through what I went through, losing my daughter, you have strong, strong feelings of revenge," Dunne said in 1990 in discussing his novel "People Like Us," in which the protagonist shoots the man convicted of killing his daughter.
"I intended for Gus (the character in the book) to kill the guy. But when I got to that part I couldn't write it. He wounds him and goes to prison himself for a couple of years," Dunne said.
He was as successful a journalist as he was a novelist and spent many of his later years in courtrooms covering high profile trials. Writing for Vanity Fair, he covered such cases as the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in 1991 and the trial of Erik and Lyle Menendez, accused of murdering their millionaire parents, in 1993.
As riveting as those trials were, they were far overshadowed in 1994, when Simpson was accused of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. With a trial that stretched out over a year and cable TV outlets providing endless coverage, Dunne became a familiar face to millions.
"I especially like to watch the jurors," Dunne explained to Fox TV during the trial. "I always pick out about four jurors who become my favorites. I sort of try to anticipate what they are thinking and how they are reacting."
He called his book on the Simpson trial, "a novel in the form of a memoir." It, too, became a best seller.

From the gritty world of the courtroom during the day, he would move into the glamorous realm of high society at night, dining with the rich and famous, charming them with his inside stories of the Simpson trial.

He was a colorful raconteur and his stories mesmerized listeners. He was a much sought after dinner guest on both coasts and in the glamour capitals of Europe, where he frequently traveled. He was a regular at the Cannes Film Festival, interviewing members of royalty and movie stars.

His assignments took him to London to cover the inquest into Princess Diana's death and to Monaco to look into the mysterious death of billionaire Edmond Safra.

He continued appearing regularly on television, and in 2002 debuted a weekly program on Court TV, "Power, Privilege and Justice." The show gave him an added dose of celebrity when it was distributed in foreign countries.

He had already been working on "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles," a fictionalized retelling of a sensational 1950s society murder, when his 22-year-old daughter was strangled by her former boyfriend, John Sweeney, shortly after she had completed her first movie, "Poltergeist."

Sweeney was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, not murder, and was freed after serving less than four years of a six-year sentence. The verdict was seen as a major victory for the defense, and Dunne bitterly told the judge in court, "you withheld important information from this jury about this man's history of violent behavior." He later told the Los Angeles Times the sentence was "a tap on the wrist."

In a 1985 AP interview, Dunne said he nearly stopped writing when his daughter was slain because he didn't want to do a book that dealt with murder, but his editor wouldn't let him quit.

"She was incredibly sympathetic and lenient on time," he said. "I'm glad now that she didn't let me quit."

Among his other books were the 1993 "A Season in Purgatory," which helped revive interest in the 1975 slaying of teenager Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Conn. A Kennedy relative, Michael Skakel, was convicted in the killing in 2002.

Dunne also wrote "An Inconvenient Woman" and "The Mansions of Limbo."

In 1999, Dunne published a memoir called "The Way We Lived Then," a compilation of photographs of him and his family with famous people and his recollections of the glamour life he and his wife enjoyed for many years.

Dunne was born in 1925 in Hartford, Conn., to a wealthy Roman Catholic family and grew up in some of the same social circles as the Kennedys. The memoir traced his fascination with Hollywood to a childhood trip he took "out West" with an aunt. They took one of those homes of the stars bus tours and he vowed to come back and be part of the glamorous world he had glimpsed.

He served in the Army during World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism in 1944 for carrying two wounded men to safety at the Battle of Merz in Feisberg, Germany. "Winning a medal was the only thing I can ever remember doing that won any admiration from my father," he later wrote.

At Williams College in Massachusetts, he and a fellow student, Stephen Sondheim, appeared in plays together. After graduating in 1949, he went to New York where he landed a job in the fledgling TV industry as stage manager of the "Howdy Doody" show. NBC took him to Hollywood to stage manage the TV version of "The Petrified Forest" with Humphrey Bogart.

Among his producer credits were the TV series "Adventures in Paradise" and "The Boys in the Band," a pioneering 1970 drama about gay life. His brother and sister-in-law co-wrote two of his films, "The Panic in Needle Park" and "Play It As It Lays."

Dunne and his wife, Ellen Griffin Dunne, known as Lenny, were married in 1954. They divorced in the 1960s but he wrote that afterward they remained close nonetheless. She died in 1997.

Beside Dominique, they had two sons, Alexander and Griffin. Griffin has acted in such films as "An American Werewolf in London" and "After Hours." He branched into directing and producing, with "Fierce People" and "Practical Magic" among his credits.

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Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch in Los Angeles and AP National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.

SEOUL, South Korea – An airport official says a high-level North Korean delegation has arrived in Seoul to pay respects to late ex-President Kim Dae-jung.
Gimpo airport official Park Hyun-il says the plane carrying the six-member delegation landed Friday afternoon.
The delegation is to head straight for the National Assembly, where Kim's body is lying in state. The 85-year-old Kim died Tuesday and will be buried on Sunday.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A high-level North Korean delegation departed Friday for South Korea to pay respects to late former President Kim Dae-jung in a rare visit that raised hopes of improved relations between the tense neighbors.
The trip may provide a valuable opportunity for dialogue between the two Koreas, whose relations have deteriorated since the inauguration last year of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative who has linked aid to North Korea to its commitments on nuclear disarmament.
"A special envoy group led by Kim Ki Nam, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, left" by special plane to mourn Kim's death, the North's Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch.
The six-member delegation of top North Korean officials is to visit the National Assembly where Kim's body is lying in state until his state funeral Sunday.
It was not clear whether they would meet South Korean officials before returning home Saturday. Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters that no other itinerary for the North Koreans had been set.
President Lee visited the National Assembly earlier Friday to pay respects to Kim, who died Tuesday at age 85. His death unleashed an outpouring of grief for a man who campaigned for democracy at home and won the Nobel Peace Prize for a historic summit with rival North Korea.
The June 2000 summit between Kim and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il helped thaw relations and spawned a flurry of reconciliation projects on the divided peninsula. Kim Jong Il sent a condolence message Wednesday to Kim's family.
The delegation's visit is part of a series of recent conciliatory gestures by North Korea to ease tensions that have been running high for months over its nuclear and missile tests.
North Korea said Thursday that it would lift restrictions on cross-border traffic, resume cargo train service and increase the number of South Koreans permitted to stay in a joint industrial zone in the North to previous levels beginning Friday.
The North imposed the restrictions in December, raising concerns about the viability of the zone — a source of hard currency for the cash-strapped country.
The Unification Ministry welcomed Thursday's announcement, but urged North Korea not to repeat such unilateral restrictions.
North Korea has only dispatched a condolence delegation once before — a one-day trip in 2001 during mourning for Chung Ju-yung, the founder of South Korea's Hyundai Group, which funded the first inter-Korean joint projects.
The North Korean delegation will be led by senior Workers' Party official Kim Ki Nam and include the country's spy chief, Kim Yang Gon, said the Unification Ministry, which handles North Korean affairs.
North Korean diplomats, meanwhile, met for a second day Thursday in the United States with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

Richardson said they told him that North Korea was ready to discuss its nuclear program with Washington. It earlier this year abandoned six-nation talks on its nuclear disarmament.

Richardson described the discussions as "very positive" Thursday.

This was the third time Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador, has met with North Korean diplomats in Santa Fe since taking office as governor in 2003. He has traveled to North Korea several times.

In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said it had yet to be briefed by Richardson on the meetings.

"But to the extent that it would appear that they expressed an interest in bilateral talks, we are perfectly willing to have bilateral talks with North Korea, as we said many times, within the larger framework of the six-party process," he said.

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Associated Press writers Wanjin Park in Seoul, Melanie Dabovich in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.