The talks were described as "workmanlike'' and the summit was extended to a sixth day today. White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Clinton had cancelled plans to travel to California for two days of political appearances in Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco and would return here to Maryland's eastern shore for his fifth day of peacemaking.

``It's not a waste of time,'' State Department spokesman James Rubin said on Monday after Clinton met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for two hours and 20 minutes.

But Rubin did not claim progress toward a land-for-peace deal, and he said the grenade attack at a busy bus stop in Beersheba, which injured more than 60 Israelis, was still hampering the push for an accord.

Clinton said the grenade attack was a"complicating factor'' in the talks. But he returned as planned to the secluded conference site along the Wye River to try to coax Netanyahu and Arafat to conclude a land-for-peace deal.

Clinton then held a three-way session with the two leaders, P J Crowley, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said. It was the first time Netanyahu and Arafat had met face-to-face since last Friday and the first three-way session involving Clinton since then.

The President and CIA director George Tenet also had an unannounced meeting with Israeli defence minister Yitzhak Mordechai and Major General Shlomo Yanay, a top Israeli security planner, Palestinian and Israeli sources told the Associated Press

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Clinton began his fourth day of mediation with a 45-minute joint session with Israeli and Palestinian security experts. He then talked to Netanyahu for an hour and conferred with Arafat.