Israel arrests top Fatah leader in West Bank

8.30am

JERUSALEM - Israel has arrested a Palestinian leader it describes as the head of "the most murderous terrorist group" in the West Bank as United States Secretary of State Colin Powell presses ahead with a peace mission in the Middle East.

Israeli special forces captured Marwan Barghouthi, a senior leader of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction and a main coordinator of the Palestinian uprising against occupation, in a raid on a house in the city of Ramallah on Monday.

Arafat aide Ahmed Abdul Rahman said: "Any harm to Barghouthi will lead to grave consequences."

Powell, who has been stymied so far in his efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, travelled from Israel to Lebanon and Syria in a bid to avert wider conflict.

He called on them to rein in Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas, whose border attacks against Israel he said threatened to escalate into a regional conflict.

Powell also gave a big boost to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new proposal for a US-hosted Middle East peace conference, saying it could take place at ministerial level and not necessarily involve Arafat. A key Israeli condition is that Arafat not attend.

Israeli forces involved in a crushing 17-day-old offensive burst into a house in Ramallah and arrested Barghouthi, 42, after others inside, including his nephew, Ahmed Barghouthi, obeyed the soldiers' demand to come out and surrender, the army said.

Israel has accused Barghouthi of leading Fatah-affiliated militants behind bombings, shooting ambushes and suicide bombings that have killed scores of Israelis during an 18-month-old Palestinian uprising against occupation.

Barghouthi, a member of the Fatah revolutionary council and the Palestinian Legislative Council, has denied the allegations but has maintained that Palestinians have a right to resist Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

He is the highest-ranking Fatah activist detained by Israel since the start of the Israeli offensive, which the army says is aimed at destroying "terror infrastructure" in the West Bank.

"Marwan Barghouthi turned the Tanzim organisation, which is part of Fatah and Arafat's offspring, into the most murderous terrorist group over the recent period," Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said in a statement.

Barghouthi, who spent several years in Israeli jails and speaks fluent Hebrew, said on Israeli television before the current West Bank campaign that Sharon would be responsible for dozens of Israeli deaths if Israel killed him.

"They tried to assassinate him more than once. He had been careful. But what can he do against the savagery of the occupation?" his wife told Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television.

- REUTERS

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