Israel spurns Arafat offer on Zeevi killers

4.00pm

JERUSALEM - Besieged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat offered on Friday to try in a Palestinian court the suspected killers of an Israeli cabinet minister.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the men holed up in Arafat's compound in Ramallah must be extradited for the October assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

Israel, which sent tanks to Arafat's offices in Ramallah at the start of its West Bank offensive on March 29 after a spate of suicide bombings that killed scores of Israelis, has said it will keep them there until the suspects are handed over.

The army withdrew from Jenin and its shattered refugee camp on Friday as violence flared in the Gaza Strip, where six Palestinians, including a suicide bomber, were reported killed.

Amid mounting international calls for an inquiry into Israel's assault on the Jenin camp, the White House said US President George W Bush wanted the facts but had no view on who should investigate.

A UN spokesman in New York said Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had invited UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to launch a fact-finding mission into Israel's attack on the camp.

Peres called Annan and said "should the secretary-general send someone to look into the facts of what happened in Jenin and elsewhere, it would be welcome," Fred Eckhard said.

At the United Nations, the United States proposed that the UN be allowed to gather "information" about the Jenin events after threatening to veto Arab demands for a UN probe.

The US text, supported by Israel, omits the word "investigation" as Arab and other states proposed in a draft resolution.

Arafat's offer to have Zeevi's suspected killers put on trial appeared to be an attempt to break the impasse at his headquarters and restore his freedom of movement.

"The Palestinian side accepts and welcomes the call by US President George W Bush to submit those accused of killing Zeevi to the Palestinian justice (system) since they are subject to Palestinian jurisdiction under Oslo peace accords," Mohammed Rashid, an Arafat adviser, told Reuters from Ramallah.

Bush said on Thursday that Zeevi's suspected assassins, from the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, should be brought to justice, but did not say where.

The PFLP said after Zeevi's shooting in a Jerusalem hotel that it had killed him in revenge for Israel's assassination of the group's leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, in August.

Rashid said the suspects had been moved to the presidential compound from a prison in Nablus in February for investigation.

"That doesn't change anything," Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin said of the Palestinian offer to try them, which he said came far too late.

"They have to be extradited."

In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian bomber blew himself up in a car outside the Gush Khatif bloc of Jewish settlements but caused no other casualties, Israeli military sources said.

It was the first suicide bombing since two that killed a total of 14 people during US Secretary of State Colin Powell's abortive peace mission to the region. Powell left on Wednesday.

Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, tanks rolled a short distance into the Rafah refugee camp and killed three men with machinegun fire, Palestinian witnesses said. The tanks later withdrew.

In a statement on a separate Gaza incident, the army said soldiers killed two gunmen near the Jewish Netzarim settlement.

The Gaza Strip had been relatively quiet during Israel's rolling West Bank offensive into Palestinian-ruled cities.

In Egypt, a 40-year-old Israeli tourist was stabbed to death near the Sinai resort of Nuweiba, Egyptian security sources said, adding that his body had been found on Thursday night.

In Ramallah, a Palestinian doctor said an Israeli sniper had killed a 14-year-old boy, just before the army lifted a curfew.

Refugees sifted through their flattened homes in the Jenin camp and buried their dead amid growing calls for an inquiry into Israel's assault on what it called a "nest of terror".

An army statement said Israeli forces had "completed their mission in Jenin", but remained in positions encircling the town and its central refugee camp to prevent attacks on Israel.

Amnesty International said there were indications of serious human rights abuses by Israel at the camp, including houses demolished with people still in them and alleged executions.

The army says it did its best to avoid civilian casualties in the Jenin camp and only blew up or bulldozed houses where gunmen had set booby-traps or were refusing to surrender.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson called off a planned fact-finding mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying Israel had refused to give it the necessary help.

Israeli troops thrust into the West Bank village of Beit Dajan, near Nablus, on Friday night, witnesses said.

Israeli armour earlier withdrew from Qalqilya, another West Bank town, after an overnight raid. Troops had left Qalqilya on April 9 but swept back to search for suspected militants.

Israel had said troops would quit Jenin and Nablus by Sunday but stay at Arafat's compound and near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem until standoffs with militants ended.

Bush said on Thursday Israel had "met its timetable" on withdrawing from West Bank cities. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused him of being soft on Sharon.

A hospital official said the Jenin camp body count had risen to 39 after the discovery of three more corpses as Palestinians buried about 35 of them in common graves just outside the camp.

The official said the death toll could climb to between 200 and 400. Israel says about 70 Palestinians died, mostly fighters. Twenty-three Israeli troops were killed in Jenin.

At least 1287 Palestinians and 452 Israelis have died since a Palestinian revolt against occupation erupted 18 months ago.

- REUTERS

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