Palestinian militants agree to extend period of calm

Palestinian militant groups agreed yesterday to extend a halt to attacks on Israel, a move welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a positive first step in peace efforts.

The militants said however Israel must meet Palestinian demands that it free prisoners and withdraw from West Bank towns. Mr Sharon said the Palestinian militants must disarm.

The militants' agreement, reached in Egypt after 48 hours of talks, strengthens Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's hand as he tries to revive talks with the Jewish state on an independent Palestinian state, analysts said.

If the truce holds, Israel could more easily carry out its plan to pull its troops out of Gaza, but it could also come under more international pressure to make other gestures.

Mr Sharon's office said in a statement the Prime Minister told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak by telephone: "The arrangement reached in Cairo is a positive first step."

A joint statement by the 13 groups said maintaining the current period of calm, agreed by Mr Abbas and Mr Sharon at a summit in Egypt on February 8, was part of their programme for 2005.

It did not set a specific time limit for the truce but the leader of the militant group Hamas said it could expire before the end of the year if Israel did not make reciprocal gestures.

"The calm will be until the end of 2005 and even during the year our commitment to the calm... is linked to the enemy's commitment to the conditions required and Palestinian demands," Khaled Meshal of Hamas told reporters.

Hamas and the leadership of the second militant group, Islamic Jihad, have gone along with the informal ceasefire since February but had declined to endorse it formally.

In the talks this week, they held out for a detailed timetable for steps the Israelis should take, but eventually went along with the mainstream Fatah movement on vaguer wording.