3 Americans Kidnapped, Released In Nablus

Three American women were briefly kidnapped Tuesday in the West Bank city of Nablus and were released later in the evening, Palestinian security officials said.

There was no claim of responsibility by an armed Palestinian group.

At one point, a man calling himself Hadi Saud contacted The Associated Press in Nablus and said he was the kidnapper. He demanded to be given a job in the Palestinian security forces and medication for a shooting injury sustained last year in exchange for releasing the hostages. He provided no proof that he was holding the women.

The security officials said the three women were last seen taking pictures on the outskirts of the Balata refugee camp near Nablus before they were kidnapped. They were held briefly before being released, security officials said.

Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, said U.S. officials were informed of the kidnappings. "We take them extremely seriously," Schweitzer-Bluhm said of the incident.

She said American officials were in touch with Palestinian security. She had no details on the identities of the women or what they were doing in the West Bank.

In the past, scores of foreigners were kidnapped by various Palestinian militant groups, but usually released unharmed after a few hours.

Meanwhile, Israel said Tuesday it would stop dealing with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas if he goes ahead with plans to join Hamas in a new government, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Arab allies sought a way to break the Hamas logjam and push forward the stalled peace process.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, after separate meetings with Rice and Abbas, urged the United States to continue seeking to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. But Israel said it would stop dealing with Abbas on larger peace issues if he went ahead and formed the coalition government with Hamas.

After the meetings Abbas acknowledged for the first time that sessions on Monday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Rice had been "tense and difficult" but said "it was not a failure and it will be followed by other meetings."

Abbas said Israel may have "misunderstood" the agreement reached in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, between his moderate Fatah faction and the militant Hamas group, according to Jordan's official Petra news agency.

"We told Israel that this agreement was made to protect the unity of the Palestinian people and its national interests," Abbas was quoted as saying. "The agreement is an expression of support for Palestinian interests, but Israel may have misunderstood it."

But in Israel, Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Olmert, ruled out any talks on a final peace deal with Abbas if he went ahead with plans to form a new Cabinet including Hamas.

Israeli talks with Abbas would be limited to matters such as improving living conditions for the Palestinians and ending Palestinian attacks against Israel. "We're not talking about negotiations on final status issues," Eisin said.

The planned Palestinian coalition government fell far short of what the United States and Israel wanted, and also disappointed Sunni Arab states — many of them U.S. allies — that had hoped Hamas would soften anti-Israeli policies enough to satisfy the West and restart the flow of vital international aid.

Rice invited security and intelligence chiefs from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to Amman for the talks to ask their advice on what, if anything, can be done further to persuade Hamas to back down.