Mideast envoy pushes on despite attacks

JERUSALEM - US envoy Anthony Zinni vowed to press ahead with a ceasefire mission marred yesterday by a Palestinian shooting in Israel, a suicide bombing in Jerusalem and fighting in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.

Hours after the violence erupted, Zinni held talks with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Ramallah in the West Bank and issued a statement through the US embassy in Tel Aviv condemning "today's terror attacks against the Israeli people".

"These attacks will not deter my efforts to continue to work with both sides to bring the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation to an end," Zinni said.

"At the same time, it is critical that the Palestinian Authority take responsibility and act against terror and punish those responsible."

US Vice President Dick Cheney, on a Middle East tour before Washington's next moves in its global anti-terror war, said in Bahrain that he hoped the former Marine Corps general's mission would yield a result by the time he landed in Israel.

In the first such attack since Zinni arrived in the region on Saturday, a Palestinian gunman killed a young woman and wounded 15 other people near a high school on a main street in Kfar Saba, a central Israeli town close to the West Bank.

An armed Israeli truck driver and two policemen shot the gunman dead. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated with Arafat's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Two hours later, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at a bus stop at the French Hill junction of north Jerusalem. Police said the bomber was killed and one woman wounded in the blast, which shattered the windows of a minibus in a section of Jerusalem occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

The militant Islamic Jihad group said it was behind the blast.

Reuters journalists witnessed heavy exchanges of fire in the Palestinian-ruled West Bank town of Bethlehem, where Israeli tanks moved into the centre briefly. Palestinian medics said one Palestinian had been killed in the fighting.

A key sticking point in Zinni's efforts has been a pullout of Israeli forces from all Palestinian-ruled territory.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said yesterday that the Army would withdraw as soon as the Palestinians provided assurances that the territory would not be used to launch attacks on Israelis.

Palestinian officials again insisted they would not enter talks on a truce before an Israeli pullout and questioned the sense of Zinni's mission unless there was also a return to negotiations on a political settlement.

The bloodshed has escalated this month, with a surge in Palestinian shootings and bombings and fierce assaults on Palestinian cities, towns, villages and refugee camps in Israel's biggest military offensive for 20 years.

The latest Palestinian attacks followed a pattern familiar to Israelis who have found almost no corner of their country to be safe.

"First I heard shots and then I went forward, and I saw a guard of some sort chasing the terrorist, who had a pistol," a woman told Israeli Channel Two television from Kfar Saba. "He didn't manage to get him in time, and the terrorist went into a shop and opened fire and I saw another two people fall."

At the Jerusalem intersection where the suicide bomber struck, police chief Mickey Levy said: "A terrorist ran towards a bus and cars stopped at a red light and blew himself up. Eight people were treated for shock and one woman was slightly hurt by shattered glass."

Zinni has been shuttling between the sides in an attempt to get them to implement a truce-to-talks plan drawn up last June by Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pulled Israeli forces out of Ramallah, where Arafat has been cooped up for three months, and two other West Bank cities on Saturday amid intense international pressure to end a harsh offensive he says was aimed at hunting down militants.

Sharon, with his popularity low, has sought to placate the Israeli left with concessions on a ceasefire and to ease pressure from the right with tougher military action. Yesterday he again said negotiations on a peace deal could not resume before absolute calm reigned.

- REUTERS

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