Palestine's premier-designate in row with Arafat

12.00pm

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian premier-designate Mahmoud Abbas stormed out of cabinet talks on Saturday (Sunday NZT) and threatened to quit after President Yasser Arafat blocked his choice for a key portfolio, political sources said.

Abbas' walkout brought a simmering dispute over the make-up of a Palestinian reform cabinet to a head and could hold up United States plans to unveil a "roadmap" plan for peace between Palestinians and Israel after two-and-a-half-years of fighting.

Washington has insisted that Abbas, a moderate also known as Abu Mazen who has denounced violence of Palestinian militants as counterproductive to Palestinian statehood goals, be able to govern without interference from Arafat whom it wants sidelined.

"Abu Mazen has threatened to resign," a senior Palestinian political source said, because of Arafat's insistence that Hani al-Hassan, an old loyalist of the president, continue to head the interior ministry which runs Palestinian security services.

Abbas -- as well as the United States -- is believed to want Mohammed Dahlan for the job. Dahlan was the Palestinian security chief in the Gaza Strip before having a falling-out with Arafat, but is seen as a member of the reform camp.

Abbas has until Wednesday to present a cabinet after the original deadline was extended on April 9.

Meanwhile A TV cameraman for the Associated Press news agency died in the West Bank yesterday after he was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier.

An eyewitness accused the soldier of deliberately targeting a group of journalists, saying he carefully took aim at them and fired a single shot.

The killing came as the father of Tom Hurndall, the British human shield shot in the head by an Israeli sniper nine days ago, said he suspected his son was deliberately targeted for helping protect Palestinian civilians.

The 21-year-old photography student from north London is close to death, with severe brain damage, after being critically wounded in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rafah on the Gaza Strip.

His father, Anthony Hurndall, 52, said local witnesses and human rights activists from the Independent Solidarity Movement (ISM) - the group his son was helping in Rafah - believed that Tom was singled out by an Israeli sniper.

A similar accusation was being made yesterday about the death of Nazeh Darwazeh, a Palestinian cameraman working for Associated Press Television News. Mr Darwazeh was shot as he tried to film clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths in the narrow streets of the casbah (old city) in Nablus.

Hassan al-Titi, a Palestinian cameraman for Reuters news agency who was standing beside Mr Darwazeh when he was shot, said they were with a group of journalists and Red Crescent workers.

An Israeli tank had broken down inside the casbah and Palestinian youths had gathered to throw stones and molotov cocktails at it. Suddenly, Mr Titi said, a soldier got out of an armoured car and knelt beside the tank.

"We shouted at him in Hebrew that we were journalists. Nazeh shouted and then I shouted."

But the soldier fired a single shot into the group of reporters.

"The soldier looked. He saw me and Nazeh," Mr Titi said.

"I looked and saw that [Nazeh's] head was damaged severely. His brain was hanging out of his skull."

There were suggestions that the soldier might have been firing at stone-throwers behind the journalists, but Mr Titi stressed that all that was behind them was a wall and a doorway.

The cameramen were experienced at working in Nablus, and had carefully positioned themselves so that they were not in the line of fire between the soldiers and the stone-throwers.

Mr Darwazeh was wearing a bright yellow vest clearly marked "Press". He leaves behind a wife and five children, the youngest six months old. His death, so soon after journalists were killed when a US tank deliberately fired a shell into the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, will raise new concerns that journalists are being targeted.

Meanwhile, as his son lies in a coma, Mr Hurndall has been independently investigating his shooting by interviewing local Palestinians and ISM activists. Tom Hurndall, who arrived in Rafah in February after spending time as a human shield in Iraq, was hit as he tried to shepherd to safety two children who were pinned down by gunfire from an Israeli tank.

Like Mr Darwazeh, he was wearing a bright fluorescent vest. Mr Hurndall admitted yesterday the outlook for Tom, who is being kept alive by a breathing machine in the intensive care unit of an Israeli hospital, was grim.

Mr Hurndall insisted he was still "open minded" about the circumstances of the shooting and was anxious not to appear partisan, but stressed that he was becoming increasingly sceptical about the army's conduct and its willingness properly to investigate the shooting.

On Thursday, the army suggested their sniper had fired only at a Palestinian gunman. So far, the army general investigating the shooting has refused to meet Mr Hurndall, and failed to interview local witnesses.

The Israelis say they are now considering a fresh request to meet Mr Hurndall, but he is preparing to demand an independent investigation.

"My son has been possibly fatally wounded by the Israelis," he said.

"If they can show me that they fired in genuine error at what they thought was a Palestinian gunman, then I will accept it. But if we're not satisfied that we're getting open and honest answers we may call for an independent inquiry of some sort to find out the truth and hope the Israelis will cooperate with that."

Last week, a preliminary Israeli army inquiry concluded that its forces were not to blame for the death of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist crushed to death by an army bulldozer in Rafah.

It said she was obscured from the driver's view - a claim hotly disputed by witnesses - and alleged that she and other ISM activists were guilty of "illegal, irresponsible and dangerous" behaviour.

- REUTERS, INDEPENDENT