PA-Israel truce talks put off after bombing

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 22 March — A Palestinian bomber killed at least four people and wounded more than 40 others on a busy street in central Jerusalem yesterday, scuttling a round of Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire talks. Security officials from both sides said new high-level cease-fire talks scheduled to be held last night with US envoy Anthony Zinni were postponed after the bombing.

An anonymous caller told news agencies and newspapers the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a radical group linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, was responsible for the bombing. “The Israelis canceled the meeting, the Americans told us,” Col. Jibril Rajoub, the head of West Bank preventative security, told reporters.

There was no immediate word when the talks would resume, but the Israeli Defense Ministry said they had been “postponed”. Israeli spokesman Arieh Meckel said the government had to reassess the situation after the second bombing in as many days. He said Israeli security chiefs were meeting to discuss the aftermath of the blast.

“Our policy is clear: we would like to see a cease-fire ... but this puts the whole situation in a very bad and sad state,” Meckel said of efforts to halt 18 months of bloodshed that has claimed more than 1,560 lives.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer later met Zinni, telling him there would “not be a cease-fire only on the part of Israel,” public television reported. And the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon convened his broad security Cabinet to examine the situation, the television added.

Arafat said “we strongly condemn this attack in West Jerusalem on innocent Israeli civilians,” vowing to “take immediate and necessary measures to stop this kind of attack and arrest those behind them, and we will not waste time doing so.”

Israeli media, quoting hospital spokesmen, said at least three people had died in addition to the bomber. A fourth person later died of injuries sustained in the attack, television reported. Jerusalem police said they detained “several suspects” after the blast.

US President George W. Bush, who was briefed by Vice President Dick Cheney on his trip to Israel this week, had more tough words for Arafat before the latest assault. “We set some strong conditions and we expect Mr. Arafat to meet those conditions,” Bush said in Washington. “I frankly have been disappointed in his performance.”

After the bombing, US Secretary of State Colin Powell called Arafat to demand he take steps to rein in anti-Israel violence, a senior State Department official said. At the same time, it was revealed that Powell had told Congress on Wednesday that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades was being designated a “foreign terrorist organization.”

In other violence yesterday, witnesses and hospital officials said Israeli troops in a tank opened fire on the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, critically wounding a four-year-old Palestinian girl in the head. Israeli tanks early yesterday carried out an incursion into the northern West Bank village of Al-Yanun near Jenin and troops detained 20 Palestinians, a Palestinian security official said. The village is situated in the so-called Sector A, which is meant to be entirely under Palestinian Authority control.

Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, yesterday received a telephone call from British Prime Minister Tony Blair. During the telephone conversation, Blair offered his country’s support for the crown prince’s proposals to establish peace in the Middle East. The two leaders also exchanged views on major international developments.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday Saudi Arabia has outlined the key principles of the peace initiative it will present to the summit for final drafting. Abbas told Reuters by telephone from Riyadh he believed the Saudi formulation would “face no objection from the Arab states at the summit” taking place in Beirut on March 27-28. He is now holding talks with Saudi officials on the ideas proposed by Prince Abdullah last month.