Jerusalem | Thursday
JOINT security talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials on Wednesday ended ”without a ceasefire agreement”, but the two sides agreed to another meeting, Israel public radio reported.
It was not clear when exactly the two sides would meet, the radio added.
The two sides had hoped to hammer out a ceasefire agreement Wednesday night to end 18 months of violence, but had failed to do so, despite US peace envoy Anthony Zinni presiding over the meeting.
US President George Bush had earlier said he was ”frustrated” by the violence in the Middle East and called on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to do ”a better job” in thwarting attacks on Israelis.
”I am frustrated by the violence in the Middle East,” Bush told reporters as he toured a school in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, hours after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed seven people in northern Israel.
Bush’s comments followed an attack claimed by the radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad in which a suicide bomber killed seven people, including four Israeli soldiers, and injured 35 people, six of them seriously.
The US president demanded that Arafat make a ”100 percent effort” to curb such attacks, saying: ”I don’t think he has done a very good job of doing that up to now. I believe he can do a better job.” -Sapa-AFP