Mideast Truce Accusations

Israel pledged Wednesday to stick to a battered U.S.-brokered cease-fire deal, but said it would not fully lift a blockade of Palestinian towns and villages until attacks on Israelis stopped.

An Israeli security cabinet reassessment of the week-old truce ended with Israel and the Palestinians again trading accusations that the other side was violating the agreement aimed at ending nearly nine months of bloodshed.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said Israel was trying to fool the world by professing support for the cease-fire while dragging its feet on one of its key elements, the end of what Palestinians call a siege of the West Bank and Gaza.

"It is an attempt to deceive international public opinion," Arafat told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"They (the Israelis) are still firing from their tanks and machine guns and are still using internationally banned weapons, and the settlers are pursuing their crimes under the protection of the Israeli army. So their claim they are committed to a cease-fire is a lie."

Arafat says he'll air his grievances tomorrow in a meeting with senior U-S envoy William Burns.

Israel launched what it described as a reassessment of the truce Tuesday after Palestinian gunmen killed two Jewish settlers in the West Bank this week and Israeli right-wingers pressured Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to take action.

But Sharon had not been expected to walk away Wednesday from the deal brokered by CIA Director George Tenet.

"The Israeli government determines that the Palestinian Authority has yet to fulfill its obligations under the Tenet document - stopping terror, arresting terrorists, halting incitement and foiling attacks," the security cabinet said.

"Despite this, Israel will still continue its efforts to implement the Tenet document," the statement said.

It said, however, that Israel would make clear at a meeting with Palestinian security chiefs later Wednesday on setting a timeline for lifting the blockades that a "redeployment plan" would be implemented "only after a cessation of terror."

Since the cease-fire took effect last week, three Israelis and four Palestinians have been killed in sporadic violence. At least 460 Palestinians, 115 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed in the last eight months of violence.

In what it calls a security program and Palestinians call economically crippling collective punishment, Israel has limited movement between Palestinian towns and villages by placing cement blocks and earthen mounds on roads. Israel has removed some roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but Palestinians called the moves cosmetic.

"The Israelis are still besieging villages, cities and camps," Arafat said earlier in the day in Egypt. He blamed the settlers for the violence, but added, "I promise, personally, and in the name of the Palestinian people, that we will do everything we can to be able to control the situation on our part with al the measures and tools at our disposal."

"The Israelis were supposed to pull out within 48 hours (of the start of the cease-fire) to their former positions and, at the same time (the two sides) were supposed to have begun the diplomatic process."

However, the actual wording of the agreement appeared to leave Israel with maneuvering room on the time frame and scope of a redeployment to positions held before the Palestinian uprising began on September 28, 2000.

The document said "demonstratable on-the-ground actions on the lifting of the closures will be initiated within the first 48 hours" of the truce and "will continue while the timeline is being developed."

In Wednesday's statement, the security cabinet reserved the right of "self-defense" although it stopped short of threatening specific retaliation for the latest killings.

"We are trying to give the cease-fire another chance but I must say time is running out and it's up to Arafat to stop the hostilities, stop the violence and the incitement and come back to the negotiating table," Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said.

Earlier, Palestinian security chiefs repeated orders to step up searches to end mortar bomb attacks on Jewish settlements.

In the West Bank town of Nablus, meanwhile, an explosion went off in a shop selling mobile phones, injuring the owner.

Palestinian officials kept the injured man under tight guard at a city hospital. In the past, Palestinian militants have frequently used mobile phones to trigger explosives planted in Israel.

Palestinian security sources said the shop belonged to an activist in Arafat's Fatah movement.

Ahead of its meeting, the Israeli security Cabinet was divided over whether to stick to the truce. One of the hard-liners, Public Security Minister Uzi Landau, said Israel's power of deterrence has been harmed by the recent show of restraint.

"Restraint causes us greater damage than the need to strike at the terrorists," Landau said.

Some Palestinians have said openly that the cease-fire does not apply to Jewish settlers in West Bank and Gaza, areas claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.

Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader in the West Bank, said attacks on settlers would continue. "Fatah and all the Palestinian movements will continue their resistance against the settlers and the occupation until they leave our lands," Barghouti told The Associated Press.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer expressed support for the Tenet truce, and said efforts to cement the cease-fire would continue when Sharon and Bush meet on June 26.

Israel and the Palestinians say the agreement is a first step in implementing a wider peace plan sketched by a committee led by former Sen. George Mitchell.

Collapse of the cease-fire would be a blow to President Bush's administration. After several months on the sidelines of the Mideast conflict, Bush sent Tenet to negotiate the truce after a Palstinian suicide bomb killed 21 people at a Tel Aviv disco on June 1.

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