Attacks on Fatah HQ after talks

JERUSALEM - Israel said its helicopters fired missiles at three local headquarters of the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement yesterday as the United States launched its latest Middle East peace bid.

The Israeli Army said helicopters had also attacked a munitions base of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation in the West Bank town of Jericho.

The attacks came on the heels of a meeting between US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Israeli television television said Barak and Ross discussed proposals by US President Bill Clinton to convene a three-way summit of the US, Israel and the Palestinians to try to forge a final peace agreement.

The Israeli helicopter attacks on Fatah targets in the West Bank towns of Tulkarm, Salfit and the city of Hebron followed a gunship attack on the West Bank town of Beit Jala, in which a German resident was killed as he tried to help wounded neighbours.

Harry Fischer, a 68-year-old German married to a Palestinian woman from Beit Jala, was hit by shrapnel during the attack, his brother-in-law said.

Eight Palestinians were also killed in Israeli attacks in an upsurge of violence on the 12th anniversary of Arafat's symbolic declaration of an independent state from exile in Algiers in 1988.

Ross was due to meet Arafat last night (New Zealand time) in the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip for parallel talks on ending seven weeks of fighting, in which at least 227 people, most of them Palestinians, have died.

Barak's security cabinet has met to discuss options for confronting the fighting.

A senior Israeli diplomatic source said after the session that the cabinet had taken decisions on "how to respond militarily to developments in the coming days."

He added that there would be "no substantive change" in what he called Israel's policy of restraint.

Deputy Prime Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer had earlier said the cabinet might approve a toughening of Israel's military response to the violence.

The clashes cast a further shadow over the funeral for Leah Rabin, widow of assassinated Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was buried in Jerusalem in a ceremony which honoured her quest for Middle East peace.

Arafat did not attend the funeral, but recorded a condolence message, broadcast on Israeli television, in which he said peace hopes were not dead.

"I lay with all respect on your coffin a flower from Palestine, renewing my commitment to peace - the peace of the brave which I believed was my inevitable choice and path," Arafat said.

"In these sad moments, I say there are prospects of light and hope at the end of the dark tunnel."

- REUTERS

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