WORLD

JERUSALEM- Twelve Europsan universities signed a cooperation agreement with six Palestinian universities in the occupied territories Friday, calling it a step in line with the Madrid peace conference.

"To make Palestinian and European universities closer to each other...means to recognize the Palestinian entity," said Luigi Berlinguer, rector of the University of Siena in Italy.

The program of exchanging students and professors is called Palestinian European Academic Cooperation in Education, or PEACE. It has a budget of $166,000 and will start in September 1992.

The Palestinian universities involved in the agreement were closed by Israel for much of the nearly four-year uprising against occupation. The West Bank's Bir Zeit University remains closed.