He was responding to remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who said he would let Arafat leave his besieged headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah only on a "one-way ticket."

"Arafat said there is not a single Palestinian who will accept going into exile under any circumstances," Erekat said. "Sharon's announcement is preparation for an attempt to kill Arafat."

Sharon said he had told world leaders worried about Arafat's plight that they could pluck him from Ramallah by helicopter.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday dismissed Israeli suggestions and said he expected Israel's incursion into the West Bank city of Ramallah to last a couple of weeks.

Powell, in a round of interviews on morning US television shows, said Arafat had an important role to play in the Middle East peace process and should not be forced out of Ramallah.

Arab foreign ministers will hold emergency talks in Cairo today over an escalating crisis in the region prompted by Israel's invasion of several West Bank towns, Egypt's Middle East News Agency (MENA) said yesterday.

MENA quoted Palestinian Planning and International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath as saying the meeting would discuss how to help the Palestinian people and co-ordinate Arab views on Israeli practices against the Palestinians.

The meeting is being held at the request of the Palestinians, MENA said.

In Bethlehem, outgunned Palestinians fought desperately to keep Israeli troops out of Manger Square after tanks and armoured vehicles pushed into the biblical town near Jerusalem overnight.

The European Union (EU) stepped up pressure on Israel yesterday to withdraw its troops from Palestinian territories and called for an immediate ceasefire to end the spiral of violence in the Middle East.

The European Commission also called for an end to the recent wave of Palestinian suicide bombings.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the White House appeared to disagree on Monday about whether a cease-fire had to take place before Israel could withdraw its troops from Arafat's compound in Ramallah.

Fearing the worst in the Middle East is yet to come, Annan called on Security Council members to pressure all parties before violence spirals out of control.

Also on Monday, Saudi Arabia insisted that the United States had to stop favouring Israel and begin exercising its diplomacy with an even hand.

"The Americans have said Arafat should involve himself 100 per cent. Why don't they ask the same of Mr Sharon? He, too, should make a 100 per cent effort to achieve peace," Prince Saud said during a brief stop in Paris.

In Other Related Developments:

An OPEC official said the 11-member oil cartel would not use oil as a weapon to force the United States to pressure Israel into withdrawing from Palestinian territory after Iran and Iraq said they would consider doing so.

"It is totally out of the question," the official said. Arab producers, who account for half of the world's crude oil supplies, have not used the oil card since 1973 despite repeated calls by Iraq and others to do so.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference failed at its meeting in Malaysia to forge a common definition of terrorism, which had been one of the goals of the gathering.

The Israeli army unleashed heavy tank and rocket fire on the Palestinian security headquarters of the West Bank near Ramallah, where it said dozens of suspected militants responsible for anti-Israeli attacks were holed up.

A Palestinian official said the Israelis forced 60 Palestinians to walk in front of their tanks as a "human shield" to allow them to approach the compound of security chief Colonel Jibril Rajoub. The Israeli army denied the claim.

Iranian-backed Hizbollah guerrillas fired a Katyusha rocket into Israel from Lebanon early yesterday, Israeli security officials said. Israeli troops fired back shells later yesterday at the edge of a Lebanese town near a disputed border zone.

(China Daily April 3, 2002 )