MIDDLE EAST: A meeting of Palestinian and Israeli negotiators broke up in disagreement yesterday over Israel's refusal to free prisoners jailed for attacks, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.
Israel yesterday approved a troop pullback from West Bank cities, and the release of 900 Palestinian prisoners, mostly members of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.
The 900, held for minor security offences, are among some 8,000 in jail for attacks on Israelis during a four-year uprising.
A senior Israeli official said Palestinian Minister Saeb Erekat, at a meeting with an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, rejected proposed Israeli gestures for a February 8th summit in Egypt due to the prisoner issue.
"They rejected the prisoner offer. They walked out" after two hours of talks, a senior Israeli official said.
"I don't know what they expected."
Palestinian sources confirmed they had rejected Israel's refusal to include prisoners jailed over attacks on Israelis on the list of those Israel proposed to free in coming weeks.
Sources in Mr Sharon's office said the talks had reached a crisis, though officials on both sides did not rule out further negotiations.
Mr Sharon's aide, Dov Weisglass, had met with Mr Erekat in Tel Aviv to work out details for an Abbas-Sharon summit.
One source said the meeting ended when Mr Weisglass told Mr Erekat - who asked Israel to free Palestinians jailed for attacks before a 1993 interim peace deal - that Israel "has no intention to change a decision against freeing any terrorists with blood on their hands".
Earlier Palestinian gunmen wounded four Israelis, two of them soldiers, in two attacks in the occupied territories.
In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian gunman attacked an Israeli checkpoint with grenades and gunfire, wounding two soldiers, an Israeli military source said.
Soldiers fired back at the gunman, killing him, Israeli media reported. Palestinian medics had no comment.
Jewish settlers said a Palestinian passer-by was also wounded in the incident at the Orchan junction, north of a Jewish settlement bloc in southern Gaza.