THE MIDDLE EAST: In response to domestic and international pressure for reform, the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat slimmed down and reshuffled his governing cabinet yesterday.
He replaced his finance, justice and education ministers, and relinquished the Interior Ministry portfolio that oversees his unwieldy security apparatus.
Although it was praised by some of the ministers who keep their seats, the reshuffle, which was announced on the eve of talks at the White House today between President Bush and the Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon, met an indifferent response in Israel, which was burying three victims of a spate of weekend attacks by Palestinians.
If the Palestinian security forces now "intercept the attacks against Israel and not collaborate with them, we'll know that something big has occurred", said Dore Gold, an adviser to the prime minister. Hamas, which had rebuffed Mr Arafat's call to join the PA government, dismissed the move as a capitulation to US pressure.
Detailing the changes, which see the 31-member cabinet cut back to 21, the information minister Mr Yasser Abed-Rabbo, one of those who retained his post, said this was an interim reshuffle prior to Palestinian Authority elections tentatively scheduled for late this year or early next.
Highlighting the most potentially significant of the new appointments, he said the incoming interior minister, Mr Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, would be "responsible for all the security issues inside the Palestinian territories (and) supervise all the security establishments".
But many Palestinians saw the choice of Mr Yehiyeh (73), a minor figure now expected to oversee such prominent officials as West Bank security chief Mr Jibril Rajoub and his Gaza counterpart Mr Mohammad Dahlan, as indicating that Mr Arafat intended to maintain behind-the-scenes control of the various security forces.
The choice as finance minister of Mr Salam Fayyad, who formerly worked for the International Monetary Fund, was seen as more propitious - again, provided that he is given real power. As expected, Mr Arafat did not create a new post of prime minister, which would have represented a clear decision to relinquish significant personal authority.
Mr Sharon, whose main mission in the US is to ensure that the Bush administration does not launch an unpalatable peace initiative - one, that is, with a firm timetable for Palestinian statehood and an explicit demand for an Israeli withdrawal to its 1967 borders - has long made it clear he will not be satisfied with any reform which leaves Mr Arafat at the head of the PA hierarchy.
Mr Sharon wrote in the New York Times yesterday that the current Palestinian leadership lacked an "elementary commitment to permanently renouncing violence in the resolution of political differences". He said Israel needed peace with "the entire Arab world", but rejected a full withdrawal from the occupied territories and a redivision of Jerusalem.
Three Israelis - a husband and wife and a reservist who was guarding their settlement - were shot dead by two Palestinians at Karnei Tzur, near Hebron, early on Saturday morning. The woman, Ms Yael Shorek, was in her final month of pregnancy.
One of the gunmen, who opened fire on mobile homes at the settlement, was killed; the second escaped. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
That night, an 18-year-old gunman from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine also opened fire at the settlement of Yizhar, near Nablus, injuring four soldiers before he was shot dead. Israel Radio reported last night that angry residents at the settlement burned the man's body, before troops intervened.
In the Gaza Strip at the weekend, three Palestinians were blown up by their own bomb near Rafah, the Israeli army said. Two more Palestinians, members of Islamic Jihad, were shot dead as they swam ashore in an attempted raid on the Dugit settlement.
Two Palestinians were injured during an army raid on the West Bank town of Tulkarm yesterday - the latest in what are now daily incursions by the army into Palestinian territory.