WASHINGTON - As conflict with the Palestinians claimed the lives of three Israeli soldiers, Israel's foreign minister declared Wednesday the uprising on the West Bank had reached the stage of a ''miniwar.''
Emerging from a 90-minute meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that focused on trying to end the fighting, Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami told reporters: ''We have to deal with it not as a civilian uprising, but as a military confrontation.''
Declaring Israel wants to ''open channels'' with the Palestinians, Ben-Ami said: ''We have had crises in the past and emerged with solutions. This cannot be ruled out.''
But the foreign minister took a somber view of the clashes on the West Bank in which three Israeli soldiers were killed Wednesday. Speaking in Hebrew, then in English, Ben-Ami said: ''It's not an intefada (uprising). It's a war, or a miniwar, if you prefer.''
Israel, however, deferred any immediate retaliation for the soldiers' deaths after Cabinet minister Shimon Peres met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Gaza. Peres said after the meeting that he discussed implementation of understandings reached between the two sides at a summit Oct. 16-17 in Egypt.
In a statement issued by the White House Wednesday night, President Clinton welcomed the development and said ''I'm hopeful it will lead to implementation of the steps agreed to by both parties'' at the summit.
Ben-Ami then went to the White House and met for more than an hour with Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser.
Ben-Ami and Albright discussed the prolonged conflict and ''possibilities of getting out of the impasse and creating conditions for resuming the peace talks,'' the foreign minister said.
Talking to reporters on the sidewalk outside the State Department, he called it a ''good meeting'' and said he hoped Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians ''will give the necessary instruction so the violence will stop.''
Ben-Ami is to due to be followed Friday by senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat as Albright tries to persuade the two sides to pull back from confrontation as they agreed at a summit in Egypt two weeks ago.
''It's critical that both parties move immediately to implement'' the agreement to step back from confrontation they reached with Clinton at the Sharm el-Sheik summit, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday.
White House spokesman P.J. Crowley said that during his meeting with Berger, Ben-Ami reaffirmed a desire to see a path back to the negotiating process. ''We'll just have to see how and whether we're in a position to help,'' Crowley said.
American mediator Dennis Ross will meet in New York with Ben-Ami, who flew there Wednesday night for a speech to the Anti-Defamation League and meetings with Israeli diplomats in the United States and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared a timeout in negotiations last week so long as Palestinian rock-throwers and gunners kept targeting soldiers and settlements. On Tuesday, Arafat accused Israel of destroying the peace process.
''We continue to discuss and consider the prospect of meetings with both Chairman Arafat and Prime Minister Barak,'' Crowley said. ''Clearly, the president would like to meet with both leaders sometime in the near future, but nothing is set yet.''
Albright said in a television appearance Monday that Arafat bore some responsibility for the fighting between Israel and Palestinians. Some of his statements, she said, ''are very difficult to swallow in terms of wanting to keep fighting.''
''I hope that he will exercise more control,'' she said, ''and I'm sure that he can and that we can get back to a peace process.''