US takes new step to end Middle East bloodshed

11.45 am

JERUSALEM - Israel and the Palestinians have dug into familiar positions after the United States took a tentative step toward giving teeth to a report by a US-led committee on ways to end eight months of Middle East violence.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, accepting the recommendations today of the panel chaired by former US Senator George Mitchell, again called for the reconvening of an international summit that proposed a cease-fire last October.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon welcomed the Mitchell report but accused the Palestinians of "playing games," reiterating Israel's position that a complete cessation of violence must come before talks.

The spokesman also rejected the committee's call for a halt to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- at the heart of the Palestinian uprising for independence.

At least 440 people, mainly Palestinians, have been added to the death toll since an emergency summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, seven months ago set a framework for ending the bloodshed within 48 hours and establishing a fact-finding committee.

The panel called for an immediate cessation of violence followed by confidence-building measures and a resumption of security cooperation and peace negotiations.

Endorsing the Mitchell committee's recommendations, but stopping short of a full US diplomatic drive, US Secretary of State Colin Powell named a "special assistant" to help the warring sides stop the fighting.

Powell said the US ambassador to Jordan, William Burns, would back up US diplomats in Israel and the Palestinian territories and "make himself available to the parties."

"It is now up to the leaders in the region to show that they have heard this clarion call from this committee," he said.

But he stopped short of promising personal involvement in talks, let alone a new summit.

Arafat told a news conference in Gaza he hoped it would be possible to bring together the participants of the Sharm el-Sheikh summit as soon as possible, "to begin a discussion on this report and to begin its implementation."

But the committee's call to Israel to freeze construction of new Jewish settlements or any expansion of existing ones presents a major obstacle to peace talks.

Israel has said it will not build new settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, areas captured in the 1967 Middle East war, but rejects any stemming of the "natural growth" of outposts already on the ground.

The settlements are all illegal under international law. Israel says the issue should be resolved, in accordance with interim deals with the Palestinians, in final-status talks.

While Mitchell presented the document in New York, bullets flew along a hot firing line between the Jewish settlement of Gilo, regarded by Israel as a neighborhood of Jerusalem, and the West Bank village of Beit Jala near Bethlehem.

Last Friday a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis in the city of Netanya and Israel responded with F-16 jet strikes that killed 12 Palestinians -- intensifying international concern that fighting was spinning out of control.

"Netanya, Afula and Hadera will tremble," vowed Khaled Meshal, a leader of the militant Hamas group that claimed responsibility for the Netanya attack. The towns of Afula and Hadera also have been bombed in the past.

At least 443 Palestinians, 13 Israeli Arabs and 87 Israelis have been killed since the uprising erupted last September. The death toll stood at 103 when the Sharm el-Sheikh summit ended with a cease-fire declaration that was never implemented.

"Fear, hate, anger and frustration have risen on both sides. The greatest danger of all is that the culture of peace, nurtured over the previous decade, is being shattered," Mitchell told a news conference in New York.

Israel's right-wing prime minister, Ariel Sharon, told reporters in Jerusalem: "The draft Mitchell report is acceptable to us. We had comments, which we conveyed, and they are clear...We explained our position (on settlement building)."

Arafat said Palestinians wanted to see the Mitchell report implemented along with an Egyptian-Jordanian peace plan, which also calls for bloodshed to end and confidence-building measures leading to renewed peacemaking.

Israel also has reservations about the proposal by Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries that have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state.

It particularly objects to that plan's call for a settlement freeze and a resumption of peace talks where they left off under the previous Israeli government, led by Ehud Barak.

- REUTERS

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