THE TAOISEACH will join 30 world leaders in Egypt next week in an attempt to defuse Middle East terrorism.
Mr Bruton was invited to attend the conference in a letter from President Clinton. The British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, has also been invited.
President Boris Yeltsin of Russia and President Jacques Chirac of France have said they will attend the summit, prompted by the disastrous upsurge in violence and bombings in Israel. However, expert observers find it hard to envisage much of substance emerging from next Wednesday's hastily arranged meeting.
What the one day conference in the Egyptian Red Sea port of Sharm el Sheikh will have is symbolic value. Egypt's president, Mr Hosni Mubarak, will play host and Jordan's King Hussein will be there. President Clinton is expected not only to take his seat at the conference but to make time for a short stop off in Israel.
For the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, it will provide explicit Arab support for his current crackdown on the Ham as and Islamic Jihad suicide bombers who have struck four times in Israel in the past fortnight for the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, it will underline international support for the peace process and for Israel.
Perhaps most importantly, Mr Clinton's flying visit to Israel will tacitly re emphasise the US administration's hope that Mr Peres, and not his hardline Likud rival Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, may yet emerge victorious from May's Israeli elections.
It had always been assumed in Israel that any new spate of radical Palestinian attacks would drove fatal to Mr Peres's chances of re election. And yet, after this unprecedented series of suicide bombings, it is Mr Peres, and not his Likud opponent Benjamin Netanyahu, who probably slept easier last night.
Mr Peres must have dreaded this weekend's regular crop of public opinion polls, probably expecting to see Mr Netanyahu 10 or even 20 per cent ahead of him. Extraordinarily, though, two surveys placed Mr Netanyahu just 2 or 3 three per cent ahead, one had them even, and the fourth - taken a little later than the others, when the traumatic impact of the bombings was apparently starting to recede - put Mr Peres 6 per cent ahead. Mr Peres was encouraged by a series of pro peace demonstrations yesterday, including one outside his home.