Truce Talks End Without Agreement
U.S.-mediated talks aimed at forging an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire ended without agreement Friday, but another meeting was agreed on for early next week, Israeli security sources said.
The talks were preceded by a third Palestinian suicide bombing.
U.S. officials have put pressure on both sides to show restraint and give the truce mission of Washington's Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni a chance to bear fruit, but continuing suicide bombings suggest he has little time.
Palestinian security chief Jibril Rajoub said the meeting was very tense, with the Israelis focusing mostly on the bombings while the Palestinians complained about Israeli army incursions into Palestinian territory.
The latest talks ended hours after a Palestinian man blew himself up at an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank, wounding an Israeli officer in the third suicide bombing in three days.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Israeli military said the bomber had intended to blew himself up in Israel, but detonated the explosives prematurely when he was unexpectedly stopped by soldiers at a surprise checkpoint and was asked to lift his shirt during a search
Friday's truce talks took place at a secret location in Tel Aviv.
"We held a security meeting at the Americans' behest, although frankly we were reluctant to do so given the continued Palestinian terrorist attacks," an Israeli security source told Reuters by telephone.
"The meeting ended with no concrete accomplishments as far as we were concerned. We agreed to hold another meeting early next week, possibly Sunday," he said.
A truce would pave the way for Israel to lift a travel ban on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat so that he could hold talks with Vice President Dick Cheney and attend an Arab summit next week in Beirut that will discuss a Saudi-initiated Middle East peace plan.
President Bush said Friday a meeting between Cheney and Arafat was still possible, so long as Arafat moved to stop attacks against Israel.
"A meeting could happen if and when Chairman Arafat performs, does what he's supposed to do," Mr. Bush said at a press conference with Mexican President Vicente Fox after attending a U.N. conference on development in Monterrey.
Zinni convened the Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs Friday to try to salvage his precarious truce mission after a Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem the day before that killed three Israelis and wounded over 40.
A Palestinian official said Zinni earlier in the day met Arafat at the Palestinian president's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah where he has been confined by the Israeli army since December.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said after the Ramallah session that Israel had posed unacceptable conditions for activating a cease-fire plan charted last June by CIA Director George Tenet.
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Erekat did not elaborate, but Israeli political sources said differences touched on a timetable for realizing the truce and progressing to a broader U.S.-backed plan for defusing mutual mistrust and reviving negotiations on a final peace settlement.
"We expressed our willingness to implement Tenet's plan as it was written and not according to Israeli conditions and dictation," Erekat told reporters.
But the security session showed that both sides in the 18-month-old conflict were still talking despite the suicide bombing in downtown Jerusalem and another the day before in northern Israel that threatened to shred Zinni's mission.
Tenet's plan envisions a cease-fire, an Israeli pullback to positions held before the start of the uprising and arrests of militants by Arafat's security services.
Suicide bombings on Wednesday and Thursday were carried out by the militant Islamic Jihad and by the Al Aqsa militia, respectively. In all, 10 Israelis were killed and dozens wounded in those two days.
Palestinian sources in the West Bank town of Nablus said that Friday's attack was ordered by a faction of Al Aqsa that is engaged in a power struggle with veteran local militia leader Nasser Awais. The internal rivalry can only complicate any effort Arafat makes to bring the militants in line.
In an unprecedented public statement Friday, Awais declared himself overall head of the Al Aqsa militia in the Palestinian areas and, in defiance of Arafat's cease-fire call, said his organization would continue to carry out attacks.
Friday's attack came a day after the U.S. State Department said the process has been put in motion to designate the Al Aqsa Brigades a terror organization. That would make sending money to the group illegal for Americans.