The U.S. has basically withdrawn from active participation in the peace process.
Mr. Barak also said he would suspend Israel's participation in the peace effort until after the Feb. 6 election.
Mr. Mofaz had threatened to freeze Israeli participation in the peace effort until the Palestinians began to dismantle the militant groups.
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said on returning to Gaza City from Cairo that he had expected Mr. Barak to suspend Israel's participation in the peace process.
Mr. Barak also said that he would suspend Israel's participation in the peace effort until after the Feb. 6 Israeli election for prime minister, which he is expected to lose to Ariel Sharon, the right-wing Likud Party leader.
Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski made a speech late this evening, advising Parliament to approve the bill and accept NATO's participation in the peace effort, although he expressed strong reservations.
Pressure on negotiators intensified after a car bomb attack Sunday on the London television headquarters of the BBC by the Real I.R.A., a renegade group opposed to republican participation in the peace arrangements.
At the end of the 1990s, Hume's popularity remained undisputed, but his party continued to be challenged by Sinn Féin, which had gained political respectability through its participation in the peace process.
It rejects Israel's existence, refuses to eschew terror, and disavows all previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements — the terms established by the United States and the other members of the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers for participation in the peace process.
FOUR months after the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 set Northern Ireland on the path to a peaceful settlement of its conflict, a bunch of dissidents, who had broken away from the IRA in anger at its participation in the peace process, committed the worst atrocity in the province's 30-year "Troubles".
