Powell Puts Off Arafat Meeting

His peacekeeping mission rocked by a terrorist bombing, Secretary of State Colin Powell has cancelled his meeting with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on Saturday, Powell's spokesman said, but a U.S. official said the talks might go ahead on Sunday.

Referring to a female suicide bomber who killed six other people and injured 90 more in a central Jerusalem market, the spokesman Richard Boucher said: "In light of today's developments, the secretary will not be meeting with Chairman Arafat Saturday."

But a senior State Department official told reporters on condition of anonymity that the meeting could be rescheduled. "Sunday is a possibility," he said.

Boucher said Powell wanted Arafat to condemn the attack but did not say it was a condition for the meeting. "The secretary condemns in the strongest possible terms today's terrorist attack and expects Chairman Arafat to do so as well," he said.

The White House called on Arafat to publicly denounce the terrorist act just hours after the bombing.

Arafat has been reluctant to make such a statement, with support for suicide attacks running high among Palestinians in light of Israel's military offensive in the West Bank.

According to the spokesman Powell plans to meet aid workers in Jerusalem on Saturday to investigate humanitarian problems in the West Bank following Israel's incursions into Palestinian towns.

"He's looking at the whole situation in terms of the bombing and everything," Boucher said earlier Friday.

The bomb was detonated by a female suicide bomber at a bus stop in Jerusalem. Police reported six deaths and at least 84 injuries. Blood, body parts, glass and twisted metal were strewn across a busy market where the attack took place. Israel Radio identified the bomber as Nidal Daraghmeh, a woman from the Jenin refugee camp.

Police closed off the streets near the Mahane Yehuda, Jerusalem's outdoor market, which has been the scene of frequent suicide bombings in the past. Police Chief Mickey Levy said the bomber failed to reach the heart of the market or get onto a bus because of tight security, Levy said.

"She set off a very powerful bomb," he said.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, claimed responsibility for the attack.

David Baker, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said: "It is clear that Arafat and the Palestinian Authority exist for one purpose, spreading terror."

The White House said President Bush was undeterred by the latest bombing, and would continue efforts to get the sides around a political bargaining table.

"The president condemns this morning's homicide bombing in Jerusalem," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "And the president will not be deterred seeking peace despite this attack. There are people who don't want peace. The president wants peace and he will continue every effort to seek peace."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked the Security Council to consider calling for an international force in the Middle East to curb violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinian U.N. observer Nasser al-Kidwa quickly welcomed the initiative. But the United States, Israel's closest ally, expressed doubts as the Jewish state has long opposed a third-party presence in the region.

"We just don't see how it can happen unless the two parties agree to it," a U.S. official said.

Earlier, Powell and Sharon emerged from hours of talks with no timetable for withdrawing Israeli troops from Palestinian cities and towns on the West Bank.

"I hope we can find a way to come to agreement on this point of the duration of the operations and get back to a track that will lead to a political settlement because that is uppermost in everyone's mind," Powell said.

But Sharon gave no commitment, saying "Israel is waging war against the infrastructure of Palestinian terrorism and Israel hopes to conclude this war very soon."

Powell said he and Sharon had a "mutual commitment" to bring the two sides to negotiations toward a peace settlement that would eventually lead to a Palestinian state.

"We recognize that eventually to reach the kind of solution that is needed, the parties must talk," Powell said, "the parties must begin negotiations."

The visit with Sharon was to have been followed Saturday by talks with Arafat in his devastated office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, in which Powell planned to press Arafat to take a tough stand against violence. Powell said this week that Israel must deal with Arafat as a partner in peacemaking.

Israel made two announcements in advance of the meeting: a withdrawal from two dozen Palestinian towns, and a statement on the Palestinian death toll in the past week's fighting in the Jenin refugee camp.

The Israeli army's chief spokesman, speaking just minutes before the Sharon-Powell meeting began, said that hundreds of Palestinians were apparently killed in Jenin. Releasing that number in an interview with Army Radio, the army's chief spokesman, Brigadier General Ron Kitrey denied Palestinian allegations that Israeli soldiers have carried out massacres. Two hours later, however, the Israeli army was out with a revised statement saying the "hundreds" referred to by Kitrey included both dead and wounded.

Jenin, like other areas on the West Bank, has been a closed area since the beginning of the Israeli offensive and journalists have been unable to provide firsthand reports.

CBS News Correspondent David Hawkins reports the Israeli army says it's got nothing to hide but continues to prevent independent witnesses from entering the camp.

Palestinians who've fled from the camp in recent days say Israeli soldiers massacred hundreds of civilians.

The Israeli army estimates that it killed 100 to 200 people in eight days of fighting and claims it's the Palestinians who are hiding the bodies.

"What they want to do when we leave Jenin is to throw them into the street to display them in a very cynical manner to have a propaganda victory and to try in a very, very cynical way to show that Israel has committed a massacre in Jenin which is obviously a big lie," said Israeli Army spokesman Moishe Fogel.

Twenty-eight Israeli soldiers have died in the military campaign, all but five of them in Jenin.

Thursday, in advance of Powell's arrival, the Israeli government said its troops were withdrawing from two West Bank towns and 22 villages. But Sharon also said he would keep Israeli troops in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jenin and Nablus until Palestinian militants were vanquished.

Sharon acknowledged that the fighting was causing the U.S. difficulties, but refused to call a halt to the two-week-old incursion.

"They (the Americans) have problems in the region, that's true, but I informed them that our activity will continue, and it will continue," Sharon said.

The U.S., along with the United Nations and European leaders, has demanded an immediate Israeli pullout.

Israel's army says 4,185 Palestinians have been arrested in the operation – nearly half of them in the past two days as fighters in the key northern West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus, their numbers depleted in battle, ran out of ammunition and surrendered.

The battle in Nablus had ended before dawn Wednesday, when an estimated 100 gunmen – hungry, exhausted and nearly out of ammunition – walked out of an Old City mosque.

In Bethlehem, Israeli forces in armored personnel carriers circled the Church of the Nativity compound that has been the site of standoff between soldiers and about 200 armed Palestinians. A ring of tanks controlled access from all sides. Black smoke wafted up near the compound; witnesses said the army had blown up some cars in the area.

A U.N. convoy distributed food to a Bethlehem refugee camp and to families in the city, which has been under nearly constant curfew since the standoff began April 2. Troops patrolled streets and blew open doors to shops and homes, especially in the Old City, as they searched for militants.

In the latest clashes on the tense Israeli-Lebanese border, Israeli warplanes blasted suspected guerrilla hide-outs in southern Lebanon Thursday shortly after Hezbollah fighters attacked Israeli outposts in a disputed border area.