Powell will meet Arafat

JERUSALEM - Secretary of State Colin Powell, scrambling to put his peace mission back on track, has reinstated plans to meet Yasser Arafat after the Palestinian leader met US demands that he denounce terrorism.

Powell had called off talks with Arafat set for Saturday following a suicide bombing that killed six people in Jerusalem on Friday, but rescheduled the meeting for Sunday after the Palestinian president condemned the attack.

Shooting erupted in the area of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where Palestinians, some armed, have been besieged by Israeli troops for 12 days, witnesses said.

At the Jenin refugee camp to the north, journalists saw devastation and rotting bodies after days of the most ferocious fighting in the 15-day-old Israeli offensive in the West Bank.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Powell had decided to go ahead with the talks at Arafat's besieged headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah because his statement condemning terrorism included "positive elements."

"The secretary will work with Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian leadership and to help make these statements a reality with effective action to bring and end to terror and violence and an early resumption of a political process," Boucher said.

Earlier in the day, Powell urged restraint by Israeli forces, which swept into half a dozen West Bank towns on Saturday in defiance of US pressure to end the offensive.

Powell also expressed concern about the "serious humanitarian situation" in Palestinian-ruled areas seized by the Israeli army, which has said its main objective is to root out militant behind attacks on Israelis.

Those conditions were witnessed first-hand by Reuters journalists in the Jenin refugee camp. Its houses and passageways were smashed and riddled with bullet holes, two days after Israeli forces crushed the last major pocket of Palestinian resistance. Bodies lay decomposing in houses as women and children struggled to survive in the ruins.

Palestinians have accused Israel of carrying out a "massacre" in Jenin camp in which hundreds were killed. Israel has dismissed the charge as "propaganda" saying it fought carefully to avoid civilian casualties.

The army has said it killed 200 Palestinians during the offensive, about half of them in the Jenin camp.

- REUTERS

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