Palestinian and US negotiators are working on a joint statement condemning suicide bombings and endorsing creation of a Palestinian state, officials said, while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said his troops would leave two of the four West Bank towns they are occupying within a week.
However, early Tuesday Israeli tanks re-entered Tulkarem, one of two towns evacuated April 9. Witnesses said tanks rolled in from four directions, covered by attack helicopters. Israeli military sources said the incursion was aimed at making arrests, not reoccupying the town.
Also, Israeli tanks surrounded the Askar refugee camp next to Nablus, residents said.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell postponed a meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Palestinian officials said, hoping that the joint statement could be worked out before the session in Arafat's besieged Ramallah headquarters, now set for Wednesday. Powell is to meet Sharon on Tuesday.
In Ramallah Monday, Israeli forces arrested a top Palestinian militant linked to Arafat and also detained two Hamas leaders.
Marwan Barghouti, accused by Israel of leading the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which has claimed responsibility for dozens of shooting attacks and, lately, suicide bombings in Israel, was captured by Israeli forces not far from Arafat's office.
Barghouti, 41, is Arafat's man on the ground in the West Bank, leading his Fatah movement and Tanzim militia. Barghouti has never admitted commanding the Al Aqsa group.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Barghouti would be put on trial in Israel. ``It will be basically open,'' he told CNN's Larry King.
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Barghouti turned Tanzim into ``the most murderous of the terrorist organizations committing most of the recent attacks against Israel, attacks of all types, but principally suicide attacks including female bombers, shootings and bombings.'' On Friday, a woman bomber from the Al Aqsa group killed herself and six other people in Jerusalem.
Also, Israeli forces in Ramallah arrested two leaders of the militant Hamas, Jamal Tawil and Fayez Abu Wardeh, Palestinians said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Sharon told CNN that Israel would pull out of the West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus within a week. ``Altogether, we are on our way out,'' he said, but added that Israeli forces would remain in Ramallah and Bethlehem until suspected militants there surrender.
Later, in a phone conversation with US President George W. Bush, Sharon repeated his commitment to pull back from Jenin and Nablus within a week, the White House said. Bush has been pressing Israel to end its offensive in the West Bank, begun March 29 after a series of bloody Palestinian suicide bomb attacks in Israel. Bush welcomed Sharon's pledge as ``a positive development.''
In the interview, Sharon said the assassins of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, gunned down in a Jerusalem hotel on Oct. 17, are in Arafat's Ramallah compound, and a standoff at the Church of the Nativity continued between Israeli forces outside and about 200 Palestinian gunmen inside.
(China Daily April 16, 2002)
