Sharon rebuffed by own party

Yasser Arafat toured West Bank cities for the first time in five months yesterday and reassured Palestinians they would win their own state, brushing aside a vow from Ariel Sharon`s Likud party never to allow it.

The Palestinian president visited Bethlehem`s Church of the Nativity, site of a five-week Israeli siege, Jenin - scene of devastation during a recent Israeli offensive - and Nablus, seeking to reaffirm his leadership of the Palestinians.

"To Jerusalem we are headed. Jerusalem is the capital of our independent state of Palestine, never mind who agrees or does not," a defiant Arafat told a crowd in Nablus in the northern West Bank.

The trip began shortly after the central committee of the right-wing Likud party voted never to accept a Palestinian state, drawing Arab condemnation and world concern.

The Likud vote at a heated convention in Tel Aviv on Sunday marked a victory for former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the incumbent Sharon in a looming battle for the party leadership.

But Sharon, echoing comments he made before stalking off the convention`s stage after the vote, told Likud legislators yesterday that he, not the party, would set peacemaking policy.

"Two-thirds of the public elected me to make decisions, and I have," Sharon said. "I will not allow internal political considerations or self-serving tricks determine policy."

Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said the Likud vote showed Israel`s true intentions and would increase Palestinians` frustration in their 19-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation.

European officials also said it would harm the search for peace and the United States, Israel`s strongest ally, reiterated that it supported an eventual Palestinian state.

Sharon has spoken of the creation of a Palestinian state at the end of a long peacemaking process. He has since said it is premature to talk of a state and has called for major reform of Arafat`s Palestinian Authority as a precondition for negotiations.

In further West Bank violence, Israeli security forces said they killed two Palestinian gunmen in two incidents before dawn.

There was no major military action following an Israeli decision on Sunday to call off a strike in the Gaza Strip planned in response to a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed 15 people last week in central Israel.

But in Gaza, Islamic militant groups said the time was not ripe for them to cease suicide attacks against Israel despite calls for restraint from Arafat and leaders of Arab states.

Arafat, who was confined to Ramallah for five months by the Israeli army, flew into Bethlehem in a Jordanian helicopter and was thronged by supporters as he entered the church built on the spot Christians revere as Jesus`s birthplace.

His visit took place three days after the standoff between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants holed up inside the Church of the Nativity ended with the 39 gunmen going into exile abroad or to the Gaza Strip.

"This place will be in our hearts and minds forever," he told reporters.

People clasped his face and kissed Arafat on both cheeks before he went to inspect the interior of the 1,700-year-old church. Arafat, a Muslim, went on to the nearby St Catherine`s Roman Catholic church where he bowed at the altar.

Thousands of people waited to greet him in the Jenin refugee camp, parts of which were flattened by Israeli troops during the offensive and where a still-undetermined number of civilians were killed as well as fighters.

But facing a possible hostile reception by Palestinians who say they owe their loyalty to Islamic militants and demand reforms, Arafat skipped a visit to the refugee camp and went to Jenin city instead, where he spoke in the town hall.

"People of Jenin, all the citizens of Jenin and the refugee camp, this is Jenin-grad" - a reference to the World War Two battle of Stalingrad.

"Your battle has paved the way to the liberation of the occupied territories," he said.

Palestinians have charged that Israel carried out massacres in the refugee camp. Human rights groups have reported they found no such evidence but said Israeli troops may have committed "war crimes" in the camp where at least 54 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed.

An Arafat aide said Likud`s rejection of a Palestinian state undermined the peace process and the 1993 Oslo accords that had laid a basis for resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

"Peace, stability and security will not be achieved except by the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rdainah said.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in Brussels he regretted the Likud decision.

"Everybody has recognised that the only way to peace is through a (Palestinian) state. It is a pity that internal politics can make this process more difficult," Solana said.

At least 1,349 Palestinians and 474 Israelis have been killed in the Palestinian uprising since September 2000.