Jerusalem | Friday
US ENVOY Anthony Zinni is to meet besieged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Friday, a day after US President George Bush called for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories.
It will be the first meeting between Zinni and Arafat since the launch of an Israeli army push through West Bank towns on March 29.
General Zinni will meet Arafat at noon (0900 GMT), a senior Palestinian official said. An Israeli official said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had decided to allow Zinni to enter the West Bank after a meeting with the American envoy.
Arafat has since been pinned down in his West Bank offices by Israeli troops.
Tanks and bulldozers have already smashed through the walls surrounding the Palestinian leader’s headquarters compound in Ramallah and destroyed all buildings but the one housing his offices.
The authorisation for the Zinni-Arafat meeting came shortly after Bush’s call for Israel to withdraw its troops from Palestinian territories.
As Israeli tanks surged deeper into the West Bank, Bush warned Israel and the Palestinians on Thursday to step up peace efforts and announced a mission to the region by Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Powell will go to the Middle East next week to try to hammer out a ceasefire between the two sides, Bush said. According to officials, he may stop over in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
In an apparent shift in Bush’s much-criticised Middle East policy, the US president called on Israel to withdraw from newly occupied lands taken in a seven-day campaign.
His request drew a cool response from Israel, with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon saying the week-long military siege in Palestinian towns would continue, Israeli television reported.
”Negotiating before terror is subdued will only lead to its continuation,” said Sharon. The operation has seen Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat surrounded by Israeli troops at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
”The storms of violence cannot go on … enough is enough,” Bush said, a week after the launch of Israel’s campaign when the US leader said he accepted Israel’s right to defend itself against terror attacks.
His speech in the White House Rose Garden, with Powell at his side, came on the seventh day of a blitz across the West Bank aimed, says Israel, at rooting out terror and isolating Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
”I ask Israel to halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied,” Bush had said earlier.
Earlier on Thursday a high-level European Union delegation, including EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, left Israel empty-handed after Israel refused to allow them to meet Arafat.
The Israelis wrapped up the first week of their biggest West Bank military push in 35 years by ratcheting up their verbal attacks on Arafat, vowing to keep him isolated or even to expel him.
An army representative said that about 1 100 Palestinians had been arrested in recent days. Palestinian sources said this included about 10 senior security officials.
Heavy fighting raged in the West Bank city of Nablus as Israeli forces met stiff resistance in the city, one of the last major targets in their West Bank blitz to crush the 18-month-old Palestinian uprising.
Four Palestinians were killed on Thursday in Nablus, including a 54-year-old woman who died in her home after a large blast shook the Old City, security sources said.
In Bethlehem, Israeli forces pressed their siege of hundreds of Palestinians at the Church of the Nativity for a second day, looking to arrest dozens of Palestinian gunmen among them.
Confusion erupted after four explosions and rounds of gunfire were heard and Palestinian sources said the Israelis had blown away a door leading to the grounds of one of Christianity’s holiest sites.
But the Israelis denied the report and said their forces had opened fire while pursuing a group of armed Palestinians fleeing the church, which Christians believe marks the spot where Jesus Christ was born.
”We’re not going into the church,” Israeli government representative Raanan Gissin told CNN. ”We’re not going to harm the church or any of its property.”
A janitor employed at the church was shot dead by Israeli forces as he was walking to work, bringing to 11 the number of Palestinians killed since the Israelis rumbled into Bethlehem early on Tuesday.
The bodies of seven Palestinians who were suspected of collaboration with Israel were found 300 meters from the church, Palestinian security sources said on Friday.
The men were apparently killed by Palestinian gunmen on Monday after they were taken from a police station near the church.
The security sources said arrangements were made with the Israeli army to send ambulances to collect the bodies after locals had begun to complain about the corpses’ stench.
The Israelis have also taken over the towns of Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Jenin in the northern West Bank.
Only Hebron in the south and Jericho in the east remained untouched by the blitz launched last Friday with an Israeli siege of Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters.
However, a number of Israeli tanks were on the move late on Thursday near Hebron, Palestinian security officials said, although they had not entered Palestinian territory.
Two Israeli soldiers were reported killed and eight wounded in fighting in the Jenin refugee camp, according to reports compiled from Palestinian and Israeli sources. An Israeli border guard was also killed in Hebron.
Meanwhile tensions climbed between Israel and Lebanon over the Lebanese Shiite radical Hezbollah’s attacks across the border, with Israeli officials warning of a new tough response by the Jewish state.
Nine missiles were fired from Lebanon on an Israeli radar station on the edge of the disputed Shebaa Farms border area, Lebanese police said.
Israeli officials have fired off repeated warnings to both Lebanon and regional power broker Syria that they risked reprisals for Hezbollah’s raids.
The violence has raised fears of a regional war on top of the bloodshed of the 18-month-old Palestinian uprising or intifada. – Sapa-AFP
Al-Qaida offers bounties for capturing US-led forces
Afghanistan | Friday
AL-QAIDA and Taliban forces are offering $100 000 bounties for the capture of coalition soldiers in Afghanistan, a US military representative said on Friday.
Leaflets have been distributed in the eastern province of Paktia where US-led coalition forces are now concentrating their campaign against diehard enemy fighters, the US army representative said.
They pledge rewards of $100 000 for the capture of a coalition soldier and $50 000 for the killing of one.
”We continue to receive credible threats of violence against coalition service members, citizens and journalists,” Major Bryan Hilferty told reporters at this base north of Kabul.
”This may take the form of rocket or mortar attacks, vehicle bombs or direct action against soft targets. There have also been leaflets found in Paktia province offering rewards for capturing or killing coalition members,” he said.
The representative said that the focus of the campaign was concentrating on eastern Afghanistan, in the wake of a rocket attack on coalition forces on Wednesday.
”We are focusing our main efforts on eastern Afghanistan – the Gardez, Khost area,” he said.
Five tube-launched rockets were fired at a unit in the Shahi Kot valley, more than two weeks after the conclusion of the massive Operation Anaconda offensive in the area.
The United States claims that hundreds of enemy fighters were killed in the operation and the middle-ranking leadership of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network was wiped out, although few bodies have been found.
Hilferty said the rockets were launched ”from several kilometres away … we think they came from the south of the Shahi Kot valley area”.
A couple of hundred Afghan coalition forces were operating in the area alongside dozens of special forces troops, he added.
He denied the attacks indicated that enemy forces were still operating in the Shahi Kot valley, where coalition troops have been trawling through caves used by al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.
”I think the Shahi Kot valley is still cleared. If you were attacked from several kilometres away, that is not the same that the valley is not cleared.
”It seems to be more in the line of the Iraqi Scud attacks in Desert Storm (the 1991 Gulf War). You just launch it and hope you kill someone. It is not particularly well aimed,” he said.
Hilferty said coalition forces had not been informed about a series of arrests by Afghan intelligence services probing an alleged bomb plot against the interim administration.- Sapa-AFP
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