Israel and Palestinians chase security deal

9.45am

UPDATE - Israelis and Palestinians pursued a security deal on Sunday focused on an Israeli troop pullback in return for a crackdown on Islamic militants after a week of violence that battered a United States-backed peace plan.

In another challenge to the "road map" affirmed at a June 4 peace summit in Jordan, Jewish settlers have quietly set up five new outposts in the occupied West Bank since Israel began dismantling such sites last week, a monitoring group said.

The United States and Egypt, concerned about the killing of more than 50 people in Israeli-Palestinian violence over the past week, sent envoys to try to move the plan along.

A deal was shaping up for an Israeli troop withdrawal from the northern Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Bethlehem in exchange for a Palestinian Authority pledge to assume security control of the two areas and rein in militants, officials said.

Israeli Major-General Amos Gilad and Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan broached the deal in talks on Saturday, and Israel's Defence Ministry said subordinates would work out details in Sunday night meetings.

Earlier Palestinian officials said Gilad and Dahlan would continue face-to-face contacts, but Israel denied this.

The United States has appealed for restraint from both sides after a surge of bloodshed that included the killing of four soldiers in Gaza, a Palestinian suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus and seven Israeli air strikes on militants.

US President George W Bush's envoy, veteran diplomat John Wolf, met Israeli domestic security chief Avi Dichter and Dov Weisglass, a top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on Saturday.

Bush followed this on Sunday with a blast at the Islamic militant group Hamas, which has been behind much of the anti- Israeli violence and rejects peace proposals.

"The free world and those who love freedom and peace must deal harshly with Hamas and the killers," Bush told reporters when asked during a holiday in Maine whether Israel was justified in recent attacks on the group.

In Washington, Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, asked in an NBC television interview if the government would move against five new outposts a monitoring groups said settlers had set up in the West Bank, replied:

"Absolutely. This is a commitment we have taken. This is what the prime minister promised the president, and he will keep doing it like he has been doing in the last seven days."

Egyptian security officials travelled to Gaza in a bid to persuade militants to resume talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on a deal to end attacks on Israelis. They later met representatives of Hamas. But a Hamas leader predicted the Egyptian effort would fail.

"There is an occupation that needs to end and an aggression that must stop," said Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, whom Israel targeted in a botched helicopter missile strike last week.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Paris would discuss with the European Union the possibility of sending peacekeeping forces to halt Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.

US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar proposed US forces be sent, with a view to halting militants. "Clearly Hamas is right in the gunsights," the Republican lawmaker told Fox News Sunday.

But Israel has ruled out the suggestion of sending foreign peacekeepers to the occupied territories, first put forward by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan more than three years ago, and repeated by him last week.

Sharon told a weekly cabinet meeting Israel would welcome a ceasefire agreement, but said the army would still attack Palestinians suspected of planning suicide bombings.

Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian militant in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday.

The road map, which aims for a Palestinian state by 2005, mandates a Palestinian Authority crackdown on militants and an Israeli troop pullback to positions held before the start in September 2000 of a Palestinian uprising for independence.

- REUTERS