Amid Criticism, Israel Seeks Dialogue

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon convened top ministers Wednesday to discuss resuming talks with the Palestinians amid sharp criticism, including in Israel, of the Israeli airstrike that killed a top Palestinian militant and 14 others.

Atter the meeting Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said that Israel would withdraw troops from some West Bank cities and had released millions of dollars in frozen tax money in concessions to Palestinians.

Israeli officials defended the strike, denying reports that a cease-fire declaration had just been inked by militant groups and saying the removal of a Hamas leader who was plotting major attacks against Israelis was a positive step forward.

However, they also acknowledged that the military intelligence and assessment that led to Israel's raid was flawed, and called the slaying of women and children tragic.

"It's quite clear that those (assessments) are not as accurate or as fail-safe as we would like and clearly there are going to be lessons that have to be learned from this operation," said Daniel Taub, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.

A day after the killing of Salah Shehada, commander of the military wing of the Islamic group Hamas, it emerged that the F-16 warplane that attacked his house used a one-ton precision "smart bomb" to ensure he could not survive.

"Ultimately it was the military's mistake, but it does not send an F-16 to a populated area without political authorization," Haim Ramon, chairman of parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, told Israel Radio.

Nine of the dead from the pre-dawn raid on Gaza City were children, including one two-month old baby who was borne aloft by angry mourners Tuesday in a funeral procession that brought out tens of thousands of Palestinians to the dusty streets of Gaza.

The militant group Hamas vowed revenge for the strike on Shehadeh, who Israel says was responsible for dozens of attacks on Israelis in the past 22 months of fighting.

Sharon called the killing "one of our biggest successes." Israeli civilian and military leaders, however, said the loss of civilian life was a grave error.

Israeli media largely reflected their view Wednesday. "The assassination and the embarrassment," read the headline in the Maariv daily. The Haaretz daily said the army would investigate what it called the "Gaza bombing disaster."

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel's Cabinet, "according to the information which we had there were no civilians near him and we express sorrow for the injuries to them," said a statement from his office.

Sharon, Ben-Eliezer, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Finance Minister Silvan Shalom met Wednesday morning, Sharon spokesman David Baker said. He wouldn't confirm the agenda, but Israeli media said it was to discuss resuming talks with the Palestinians that the dovish Peres has initiated, and ways to funnel more aid to Palestinian territories.

Peres told reporters after the meeting that the army still intended to withdraw from areas of Hebron and Bethlehem occupied last month, if they remained calm and if the Palestinians assumed control.

The army would also consider leaving Ramallah, where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been holed up for much of the last few months, if there was a plan guaranteeing law and order there, he said.

Peres also said he had called the Palestinian finance minister Wednesday morning to tell him that about $45 million was being transferred about 10 percent of the total amount Israel has withheld in tax revenues, and that Israel had forgiven about $31 million in debt.

In addition, 4,000 work permits had been issued of a promised 7,000, and the total number would reach 30,000, he said.

Before fighting broke out in September 2000, an estimated 125,000 Palestinians crossed daily into Israel for jobs, but Israel has since blocked most of them, fearing attacks.

Some Israelis warned that the killing of Shehada would backfire, leading to an upsurge in revenge attacks by Hamas.

Lawmaker Ran Cohen, a reserve colonel in the Israeli military, said: "The death of innocent children will only encourage more desire for revenge and motivation for more terror attacks."

Cabinet Minister Yitzhak Levy said the attack might spur new bombings, but "there is no wrong time to kill a man who is a ticking bomb."

In an editorial, Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, said Israelis would shed no tears for Shehada, blamed by Israeli security officials for dozens of suicide bombings during the Palestinian uprising against occupation.

But it said: "Even when the enemy is cruel and terrible, the heart still aches at the sight of tiny bodies being borne to their grave."

World condemnation of the air strike was scathing.

U.S. President George W. Bush's spokesman called the bombing "heavy-handed," the mildest reaction in an international outcry. Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh called it "a crime against international law and morally unworthy of a democracy like Israel."

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called it a "disgusting, ugly crime, a massacre, a massacre no human being can imagine." Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal called the strike a "horrible act" with "no ethical, moral or even military justification."

Hamas has claimed responsibility for hundreds of attacks and suicide bombings against Israelis, during nearly two years of Palestinian-Israeli violence.

However, Palestinians said Arafat was close to an agreement with Hamas to stop the attacks when the Israelis sent their air force into action.

Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said Israel knew agreement was near to stop attacks on Israeli civilians, but Sharon sabotaged it because "his only solution is violence and more violence."

Ismail Abu Shanab, a leading Hamas official in Gaza, confirmed that the group held meetings with Palestinian officials in which Hamas had agreed that if Israel withdrew from the Palestinian towns it occupies "we will stop these operations."

However, a senior Palestinian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Palestinian Authority still stood by a proposal for a cease-fire that was presented to Israeli officials in a meeting last weekend.

According to the proposal, a copy of which was made available to The Associated Press, Israel would end its occupation of Palestinian cities and towns, withdraw to the lines that existed before violence erupted in September 2000, release prisoners and stop killing terror suspects.

In exchange, the Palestinians would restructure their security services, resume security cooperation with Israel, collect illegal weapons and arrest militants.

The Yediot Ahronot daily published what it said was a document that the Arafat-linked Al Aqsa Brigades approved just hours before the strike in which they undertook to "end all attacks against innocent men, women and children who are not fighter" and urged other Palestinian groups to follow suit.

It was not clear what that group's reaction to the Gaza attack would be.

Palestinian sources said the recent days' contacts between the Palestinian Authority and the various militant groups aimed at reaching a cease-fire declaration were being conducted in coordination with European and Arab officials.

An official from Arafat's Fatah movement, Hatem Abdel Kader, said European Union officials were involved in the intra-Palestinian talks and had informed Israel about an emerging cease-fire declaration earlier this week.

Shalom, the finance minister, did not deny those reports when questioned, but dismissed the seriousness of the effort. Referring to the Gaza strike, he said "it's not the first time that after an action of this kind a report appears saying that an hour before it there was a desire to end the violence."

Abdul Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas spokesman, said any cease-fire was off.

"After yesterday's heinous massacre in Gaza, there will be no more respect for a Zionist child or the so-called Zionist civilians," he said in an interview Wednesday.