Staff writerIn a move that apparently reflects a strong desire to contribute to the revived Middle East peace process, Japan plans to convene an international conference on the region's environmental issues in Tunisia in late February, government sources said Friday. The sources said that Japan has already begun to sound out the United States, Russia, Canada and some European and Middle Eastern countries closely involved in the regional peace process about the plan and has gained support from some nations. The sources said that the planned environmental conference will be held under the framework of multilateral Middle East peace talks, which are to be resumed at the beginning of next month, the sources said. The peace talks were launched in January 1992 but were suspended after Benjamin Netanyahu, a hawkish member of the Likud Party, was elected Israeli prime minister in 1996. Netanyahu was defeated by Labor Party leader Ehud Barak in prime ministerial elections in May. Barak has agreed, with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's concurrence, to reach a framework agreement on a permanent peace deal by mid-February and a formal treaty by September, although the process is expected to be difficult because of differences over such issues as the final status of Jerusalem and the fate of 3 million Palestinian refugees. The Barak administration has also resumed peace negotiations with Syria, which is demanding the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau that overlooks Damascus, in return for peace with their Jewish neighbor. The U.S. State Department announced Jan. 6 that the steering committee of the Middle East peace talks, jointly chaired by the U.S. and Russia, will be held Feb. 1 in Moscow. The committee's meeting is expected to bring together foreign ministers from the U.S. and other countries closely involved in the Middle East peace process. The resumption of the talks is apparently aimed at giving a boost to resumed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and between Israel and Syria. The multilateral talks cover five areas: water resources, refugees, economic development, arms control and the environment. There are separate working groups on these five areas and Japan chairs a working group on the environment. The U.S., Russia, the European Union and Canada chair the other working groups. The sources said that the planned conference in Tunisia will be the first official meeting of the Japanese-chaired working group in nearly four years. Tokyo has expressed a strong determination to contribute to achieving a lasting peace in the Middle East, largely because Japan is heavily dependent on the region for imports of crude oil. In mid-October, Japan, the world's largest donor of aid, hosted a two-day meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, set up under the 1993 Oslo accord on Middle East peace, to coordinate policies and bring about implementation of aid for the Palestinians. The meeting followed a resumption in September of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a final peace treaty. At the Tokyo conference, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and a group of aid donor countries signed an action plan for more effective implementation of aid for the Palestinians. It was the first time that an official international conference on matters related to the Middle East peace had been held in Japan.