Sharon offers olive branch to new Palestinian leader

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his new coalition Cabinet yesterday after congratulating Mahmoud Abbas on his election victory that he expected to meet the Palestinian President "in the near future".

Sharon's phone call to Abbas was the first tentative sign of resumed contact between the two sides.

An Israeli statement said that in the call, which lasted no more than 10 minutes, Sharon congratulated the Palestinian leader on his personal achievement and his election victory and wished him luck.

Although substantive issues were apparently not discussed, the statement said the two men would continue talking.

Sharon told the Cabinet, which now includes a Labour Party which is keen to restart the peace process, that he would meet Abbas in talks which would concentrate on security, including efforts to "halt terrorism".

Abbas said last week that he was optimistic of a ceasefire by the armed factions.

The talks are also likely to focus on possible co-operation over Sharon's plan to withdraw more than 7500 settlers from Gaza - still under challenge because of the fragility of his new coalition devised to bypass opposition from the Israeli right, including at least 13 members of his own ruling Likud party.

Ahmad Qureia, whom Abbas said he would ask to stay on as Prime Minister, said that plans for a meeting were still at an early stage. "When the right time comes, we will go for a well-prepared meeting. We will not go just for a meeting, but a useful one."

His statement followed a declaration by Abbas on Tuesday that he hoped both sides could return to the negotiating table.

"We extend our hands to our neighbours," he said. "We are ready for peace, peace based on justice. We hope that their response will be positive."

The previous meeting between the two leaders was in August 2003 during Abbas' brief term as Prime Minister under Yasser Arafat, whom Sharon repeatedly blamed for fomenting violence and refused to consider as a potential "partner" for talks.

Hamas militants fired at least five mortars at Jewish settlements in Gaza and one rocket at the border town of Sderot yesterday, risking Israeli reprisals which could make Abbas' task in seeking a ceasefire even more difficult. Rescue services in Sderot said there had been no injuries.

In a development which will be seen as indicating a continuing shake-up of the security services promised by Abbas, Jibril Rajoub, who was security adviser to Arafat for the last year of his presidency, resigned. He had been appointed in 2003 after being dismissed as the powerful chief of the Preventative Security Service.

In terms which implied he was not ruling out some future role under Abbas, Rajoub said he was leaving to allow the new President to make his own appointments.

Menachem Mazuz, the Israeli Attorney-General, will visit southern Gaza in the next few weeks to review the legality and impact of controversial proposals by the Army to demolish between 200 and 3000 houses in the conflict-ravaged border town of Rafah to make way for a potentially huge trench to stop weapons-smuggling through tunnels from Egypt.

Officials admitted that the plans for Rafah were not fixed and that a number of options were being considered.

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat has called the trench "a catastrophe and a disaster for the Palestinian people".

Meanwhile, it was confirmed yesterday that an Israeli soldier was jailed last September for five months for lying as part of a cover-up over the fatal shooting of the British International Solidarity Movement activist Tom Hurndall in Gaza in 2003.

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