Abbas tells Palestinians to keep truce with Israel

PALESTINIAN President Mahmoud Abbas told militant factions yesterday to renew their commitment to a nine-month-old truce with Israel, while a top US official urged him to step up efforts to disarm them.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed on a truce in February. Abbas coaxed Hamas and other factions behind the Palestinian revolt into honouring the ceasefire until the end of this year, when Palestinian parliamentary elections are due.

But violence has surged in recent weeks, dashing hopes that talks on a long-stalled US-backed "road map" peace plan would be renewed soon after Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip, which it completed in September after 38 years of occupation.

A Hamas statement yeterday said it would continue to abide by the truce, but that the group, sworn to Israel's destruction, would not be barred from carrying out what it called "resistance attacks" against the Jewish state.

Speaking at a ceremony for the laying of a cornerstone at a new court building in Gaza, Abbas said militants' actions in Gaza and the West Bank were harming the Palestinian people.

US Under Secretary of State David Welch, on a visit to the region to promote peace talks, reiterated a US call to Abbas to disarm militant groups.

"In every responsible country in the world the only authority to use force belongs to the government," Welch said. "This is our expectation of what would happen with the Palestinian Authority, there should be no militias, there should be no terrorist organisations."

Israel says it will not renew negotiations with the Palestinians on a permanent peace accord until Abbas dismantles militant groups. Abbas has largely preferred to co-opt them.

Tensions have grown especially high since a Palestinian suicide bomber from the Islamic Jihad militant group killed five Israelis on Monday and Israel killed three Palestinian militants in the past week in air strikes in Gaza.

Palestinian militants in Gaza have increased their rocket and mortar bomb attacks in recent weeks. Gunmen from Al-Aqsa Martyrs fired several rockets from northern Gaza yesterday, although none were found to have landed inside Israel.

Hours earlier, an Israeli naval patrol killed a Palestinian man in waters off Gaza. The army said he was shot after refusing calls to surrender and that he had tried to smuggle arms from Egypt.

The Israeli army said troops on the Gaza border had uncovered a small tunnel leading into Gaza, which it said Palestinian militants had dug for weapons smuggling. Israeli soldiers and Palestinian security forces have uncovered several tunnels in and near Gaza in the past.