After shaking hands with Clinton and saluting him as he left, Arafat told reporters in a rain-swept driveway that he had reaffirmed his commitment to making peace, and the outcome depends on the efforts exerted by Clinton.

The White House gave no indication that any ground was gained toward a firm truce or the more remote goal of reopening negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.

In fact, administration officials abandoned the phrase "peace process" and replaced it with "political process."

A White House spokesman, P.J. Crowley, would not say whether Clinton asked Arafat for a public demand that Palestinian protesters stop their rock-throwing campaign against Israelis.

But, Crowley said, "Clear statements by both leaders can only help."

"We continue to be frustrated," Crowley told reporters.

Arafat was defiant in his own exchange with reporters earlier. Thrusting at Israel, he said: "I am not the one who initiated the violence. I am not the one who is attacking Israelis. My tanks are not sieging Israeli towns. I did not order my tanks, my air force, my artillery, my heavy weapons, my navy." He interrupted his interpreter to make sure his English was conveyed as he wished.

"We are facing a very dangerous situation that is really hindering the peace process," he said.

"We are a nation with one airplane," Arafat said as he left.

He met later at his Washington hotel with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Arafat said he had raised with Clinton his proposal that the United Nations set up an international force to protect the Palestinians from Israel. He did not say how Clinton responded, but the State Department has dismissed the idea all week long, saying the preferred approach is for Israel and the Palestinians to carry out the truce they have already approved.

Crowley said: "It was discussed. I would not say it was a major topic of discussion."

On Friday, Arafat is due at the United Nations in New York, where he is likely to campaign for more support for the Palestinians, who generally can count on it there.

Meanwhile, resumed negotiations with Israel appeared only a highly remote possibility.

"We're now in a very difficult cycle," Clinton's assistant for national security, Sandy Berger, said before the Arafat-Clinton meeting. "The president is focused on what he can do in the next few months to try to reduce the violence and resume a political process."

Rejecting any notion Clinton's influence has waned as his term runs out, Berger said, "The business of the presidency goes on."

Once-optimistic plans to mold a final settlement between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who comes calling on Clinton Sunday, are in disarray, shattered by differences on Jerusalem and five weeks of violence on the West Bank, Gaza and in Israel.

In an interview with Telemundo, a Mexican television network, released Thursday by the White House, Clinton said it would be a "grave mistake" to try to force a peace formula on the two sides.

Yet he said, "The consequences of not making peace have been evident these last three or four weeks over there. And they are just horrible. So we should nudge them when we can."

On Thursday, Israeli combat helicopters rocketed a pickup truck carrying with Palestinian guerrillas on the West Bank, killing one and critical wounding another. The Israeli army said the assault implemented a new policy of targeting ringleaders.

Two passers-by were killed, and 11 were injured.

Berger would not address the incident specifically but said in a general way that "violence breeds violence, and we must find a way to break this cycle. It's important for people on both sides to do all they can to try to achieve that."