Middle East talks fail to end 'road map' stalemate

1.30pm

JERUSALEM - Israel and the Palestinians have wrapped up their first summit in two years against a backdrop of resurgent violence, still deadlocked over a US-backed peace "road map".

The high-level talks were marred by a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed a Jewish settler and his pregnant wife in the divided West Bank city of Hebron and Israel's killing of four suspected militants.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas held three hours of talks in Jerusalem, beginning on Saturday and lasting past midnight, but failed to reconcile a list of conflicting demands for ending 31 months of fighting.

The main source of discord remained which side should make the first move under a three-phase peace proposal that Washington hails as a new opportunity for Middle East peace following the war in Iraq, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.

Expectations for a breakthrough had been low, and the only concrete agreement reached during the meeting was to resume talks soon after Sharon's visit this week to Washington.

"Any real decision is waiting until Sharon meets (US President George W.) Bush on Tuesday," an Israeli political source said after the meeting in Sharon's office.

Israeli officials want Bush to endorse the amendments they are seeking to the "road map", which calls for reciprocal steps leading to a Palestinian state by 2005 and security for Israel. The Palestinians want Israel to accept the plan as is.

Just hours before Sharon and Abbas met, a Palestinian bomber disguised as a religious Jew eluded soldiers in Hebron and blew himself up, killing a settler couple in a main square.

The family of a 21-year-old Hebron man said the Islamic group Hamas, which has pledged to keep up its attacks despite the road map and in defiance of Abbas, had informed them that he had carried out the bombing.

Militants spearheading an uprising for independence have often attacked fortified settler enclaves in the divided city, where about 400 settlers live among 120,000 Palestinians.

The Hebron attack gave Sharon, who has balked at accepting the road map as it stands, a chance to hammer home his demand that Abbas must crack down on militants before Israel will make any significant concessions.

"The sides were in agreement that halting terrorism is a crucial first stage to any progress and the Palestinians promised to make a sincere and real effort to stop terrorism," Sharon's office said in a statement.

But Abbas, a leading moderate and US favourite, said in a statement he had asked Sharon to embrace the plan unequivocally, halt army raids and "assassinations", lift military blockades of Palestinian areas and release prisoners.

"The Palestinian delegation said that they are prepared to start implementing the security aspects of the road map as soon as Israel accepts the road map," the statement said.

Abbas said he had also sought restored freedom of movement for Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom Sharon has tried to isolate, accusing him of fomenting anti-Israel violence. The 74-year-old ex-guerrilla leader denies the charge.

On Saturday, troops in north Gaza killed a 20-year-old militant, and soldiers also shot dead a gunman in southern Gaza. Early on Sunday, a security patrol killed two armed infiltrators in a gunbattle in the Jewish settlement of Shaare Tikva in the West Bank, Israeli military sources said.

- REUTERS