Israel releases PLO executive

JERUSALEM - Israel has released a jailed member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee in a goodwill gesture on the eve of a Middle East summit led by United States President George W. Bush.

About 100 more Palestinian prisoners were likely to go free by tomorrow, when Bush follows up a meeting with Arab leaders in Egypt with landmark talks in Jordan, where Bush and the Israeli and Palestinian Prime Ministers will discuss a new "road map" for peace.

Taysir Khaled, a leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a member of the PLO's executive committee - its highest body - was released from prison yesterday.

"My arrest was politically motivated," Khaled said in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he was welcomed by Yasser Arafat at the Palestinian President's battered headquarters. Israeli defence officials were unavailable for comment.

Israel detained Khaled during a raid in February in the West Bank city of Nablus, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas petitioned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his freedom during talks last week.

Defence officials said earlier this week that 100 other Palestinians, mostly prisoners on the brink of release or in ill health, would leave jail within days once Israel's Shin Bet internal security service finalised a release roster.

In his first presidential visit to the Middle East, Bush flew into the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for a summit with leaders from Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, as well as with Abbas.

He will seek support for the "road map", which calls for an end to Israeli-Palestinian violence, confidence-building steps - including a freeze in Jewish settlement expansion - and a Palestinian state by 2005.

It will be Bush's first meeting with Abbas, reluctantly appointed Prime Minister by Arafat after the veteran leader was shunned by the US and Israel over allegations he supported violence in a now 32-month-old uprising for statehood.

Arafat, who denies encouraging bloodshed, will not attend the two summits, effectively frozen out by the international community but still wielding influence among Palestinians.

Bush's attendance at the meetings signals a more personal approach towards Middle East peacemaking after a US-led war in Iraq that angered many Arabs.

- REUTERS