Israel, Arafat accept Bush proposal

Israel agreed yesterday to a proposal by US President George W. Bush to end a month-long siege of Yasser Arafat, but defied the United Nations over a fact-finding mission to the ravaged Jenin refugee camp.

The Palestinian leader also accepted the plan after a meeting with US and British diplomats, an Arafat aide said.

Under the Bush plan, Israeli forces will leave Arafat`s compound and let him travel anywhere once six wanted men are moved to a Palestinian prison where they will be guarded by US and British jailers, government spokesman Amnon Perlman said.

"As soon as it is executed, Arafat will be free to move," Perlman said of the proposal approved by the Israeli cabinet.

Bush called the decision "helpful and constructive" and said his country was working with both sides to implement the plan.

"President Arafat approved the American-British plan," Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Arafat, told Reuters from Ramallah.

A White House statement said Bush, who is visiting his ranch in Texas, had spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by telephone on Saturday to try to resolve the siege.

But in a challenge to the United Nations, Perlman said the cabinet felt "conditions are not ripe" for launching the UN mission supposed to investigate Israel`s crushing assault on the Jenin camp, where Palestinians say a massacre took place.

The UN Security Council was due to meet yesterday to discuss its response to Israel`s latest request for a delay.

A British military adviser to Amnesty International said information he had gleaned so far in Jenin indicated the Israeli army`s demolition of part of the camp was not militarily justified. But Reserve Major David Holley dismissed Palestinian allegations that a massacre had taken place there.

Israel had demanded the extradition of the wanted men, including the killers of far-right Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, as a condition for removing its tanks from Arafat`s battered headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israeli tanks pushed into Arafat`s compound on March 29 at the start of a West Bank offensive launched after Palestinian suicide attacks killed scores of Israelis.

A Palestinian military court convicted four men on Thursday of killing Zeevi in October. Perlman said Fuad Shubaki, suspected of smuggling arms for the Palestinian Authority, would also be jailed under US and British guard as part of the Bush deal. The identity of the sixth man was not immediately clear.

Mohammed Dahlan, a Palestinian security chief, said Israel`s acceptance of Bush`s plan was a retraction of its position.

"We have vetoed any attempt to hand over these people and President Arafat has paid a price for that rejection by the existing blockade against him," he told Reuters.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which said it had killed Zeevi to avenge Israel`s killing of its leader, urged Arafat to reject the US plan.

"Bush should instead send international troops to protect the Palestinians from Israeli massacres," Maher al-Taher, a PFLP spokesman based in Damascus, told Reuters.

Hundreds of PFLP supporters staged a rally in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip to protest against the conviction of Zeevi`s killers, witnesses said.

There was no announcement on when the men, now in Arafat`s compound, would be transferred to prison. Perlman said Bush had invited Sharon to Washington next week "to discuss and coordinate on a broad range of current issues".

In Geneva, a member of the UN fact-finding team confirmed it would not leave for Israel yesterday as planned. "We are not going today," Cornelio Sommaruga, a former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told Reuters.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had said the main snag was whether the United Nations or Israel would choose the Israeli witnesses in the probe.

Palestinians say hundreds of civilians may have died in Jenin camp, many in homes flattened by tank fire and bulldozers.

Israel, which first accepted the UN mission and then objected to its composition and mandate, says 48 Palestinians, mostly fighters, died in Jenin while it lost 23 soldiers.

Israel withdrew last week from most West Bank towns and cities to nearby positions. It has kept forces around Arafat`s Ramallah headquarters and Bethlehem`s Church of the Nativity.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators resumed talks yesterday designed to end a 25-day-old stand-off between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen holed up inside the church built over the site revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus.

Salah Taamari, a Palestinian negotiator, said no agreement was reached. He held out the prospect of further talks, but said Israel must allow food into the church first.

Israel has vowed to keep up its siege until wanted militants inside the church surrender for trial or exile. Palestinians have proposed the militants be sent to Gaza.

The Israeli cabinet met a day after a Palestinian attack on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank killed four Israelis.

A leader of the militant Islamic group Hamas told Reuters the organisation`s military wing had carried out the attack.

The army said troops on the outskirts of Hebron later killed an armed Palestinian believed to have been involved in the raid.

At least 1,315 Palestinians and 458 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation started in September 2000.