Pullback begins

Israel began a troop pullback in Gaza yesterday and three leading Palestinian militant groups declared a three-month suspension of attacks on Israelis in breakthroughs for a US-backed peace plan.

Witnesses said Israeli armour rumbled out of the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun towards the Israeli border as part of a withdrawal from areas reoccupied in the Gaza Strip during a 33-month-old Palestinian uprising for statehood.

US presidential adviser Condoleeza Rice met both sides on the peace plan as Washington welcomed the truce by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, including its al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades military wing.

"Anything that reduces violence is a step in the right direction," said White House spokesman Ashley Snee, but added "terrorist infrastructures" must be dismantled under the plan.

Israel dismissed the ceasefire, which carried a long list of conditions, as a "ticking bomb". A truce would give the groups time to restrengthen, it said.

But Israel's attacks on militants seemed likely to be curtailed under the Gaza Strip pullback deal with the Palestinian Authority, a major step towards putting the peace "road map" into motion.

Israel said it would start withdrawing forces from occupied areas of northern Gaza in return for Palestinian police assuming security control and preventing militant attacks on Israelis.

For the first time in two years, Palestinian security officers toured the Gaza Strip with their Israeli counterparts to prepare the pullback.

Ms Rice held talks on Saturday with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and yesterday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad said in a statement: "We, the factions of the Palestinian resistance... declare the following initiative... the suspension of military operations against the Zionist enemy for three months.... This initiative goes into effect from today."

The truce was conditional on a "total cessation of all forms of Zionist aggression", including Israeli military incursions, closures around Palestinian cities, a siege around Arafat's presidential compound and "assassinations".

"If this does not stop, it will be considered a violation of this truce... and then we will respond to Zionist aggression by all means available to us," said Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a Hamas leader wounded in an Israeli assassination attempt on June 10.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa have killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and gun attacks since the start in September 2000 of a Palestinian uprising for statehood.

The radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has not signed up to the ceasefire.

Israel called the ceasefire an empty tactic aimed at giving the Palestinian militant groups breathing room in the face of a US diplomatic drive against them and Israeli attacks on their senior members.

"The main issue is to dismantle the infrastructures of terror," Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters.

While Washington backs Israel in calling for Abbas to dismantle militant groups, Palestinian officials fear such confrontation could spark civil war.

Despite Israel's dismissal of the truce, security sources said it would cease lightning incursions and dismantle military checkpoints in Gaza, which have paralysed Palestinian life.

The road map prescribes reciprocal moves, including an Israeli pullback from areas seized after the uprising began and an end to violence, leading to creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.