JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat met in secret in the dead of night to discuss negotiations on a final peace deal, Palestinian officials said on Friday. „There was a positive discussion in a good atmosphere in preparation for the final settlement negotiations,“ Yasser Abed Rabbo, the lead negotiator for the Palestinian final-status team, told Reuters. Unidentified Israeli sources quoted on Israel Radio called the talks very successful and said the two leaders would meet periodically. It was their first meeting since Arafat and Barak signed an interim land-for-security deal in Egypt on September 5 and set Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) back on the path to a lasting peace settlement. Initial reports had said the two leaders met in the West Bank town of Ramallah, but a senior Palestinian official said Arafat made a rare trip to Tel Aviv to meet Barak. Barak‘s office said there would be no official comment but acknowledged the talks by saying that Foreign Minister David Levy had inadvertently not been informed of the meeting. Levy and Arafat‘s de facto deputy Mahmoud Abbas, or Abu Mazen, formally launched final status talks at a ceremony at the crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Monday. The negotiations themselves, aimed at reaching a lasting peace agreement within a year, have yet to begin. Israeli former prime minister Shimon Peres, the father of the 1993 Oslo interim accord with the PLO, was quoted on Friday as saying a deal was more likely to take two years to seal. Both sides have publicly repeated their tough stances on the explosive issues that stand in the way of an accord, including the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements, the future of Palestinian refugees and setting permanent borders. Abu Mazen said Barak and Arafat had discussed ways to get the negotiations under way in earnest. „We discussed negotiations in general and ways to advance the peace process. We reiterated the need to follow up implementation of outstanding deals and security matters,“ he said. Levy, appointed by Barak to lead the Israeli delegation in permanent status talks, told Israel Radio he was unhappy to have been kept in the dark about the meeting. „It‘s not okay. The prime minister has the right…to meet whichever leaders he sees fit. A good and healthy relationship must be based, if not on consultation, then at least on (sharing) information,“ he said. Barak‘s office called the failure to inform the foreign minister an oversight and said Barak told Levy he would investigate how it occurred. „Barak is expected to announce Israel‘s negotiating team in the next few days. The PLO announced the members of its negotiating team on Thursday.