MIDDLE EAST: Denying that President Bush had him in mind when urging Palestinians to elect new leaders "not compromised by terror," the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat yesterday attempted to shrug off the US demand for his ousting as a precondition for Palestinian statehood.
Some of his colleagues, however, raged against Mr Bush for attempting to intervene in their internal affairs, and echoed the prevailing sentiment among ordinary Palestinians that the US President's dramatic White House address on Monday had been tailored to specifications set by Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Mr Sharon telephoned the president's National Security Adviser, Condolezza Rice, to express his appreciation for the Bush speech, but declined to publicly comment on it yesterday - presumably to avoid being seen gloating.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army pressed on with its incursions into West Bank cities - an operation launched after last week's two Jerusalem suicide bombings - and is now deployed in every major population centre bar Jericho.
In one of the heaviest gun-battles of recent days, four Palestinian policemen were killed in Hebron, when troops raided the local PA security headquarters.
About 150 Palestinians were reportedly arrested in the city, which was placed under curfew, and the army said it uncovered an explosives factory.
At the Karni border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian was shot dead when throwing hand-grenades at Israeli troops, one of whom was injured.
Although Mr Bush, in his speech, scrupulously avoided referring to Mr Arafat by name, he characterised the current Palestinian leadership as corrupt, non-accountable and "compromised" by terror, and said that as long as it held power and encouraged terrorism, there could be no progress towards Palestinian statehood.
Yet when Mr Arafat was asked yesterday whether he thought the unprecedented criticism was directed against him, he replied, "Definitely not," and appeared to suggest that in gearing up for new Palestinian elections within months he would be meeting the president's demands for reform and democratization.
Mr Bush "spoke about a Palestinian state and elections, and we consider our state will be democratic with the coming elections," said Mr Arafat, who has indicated he will run again for the PA presidency. Only "my people can determine" whether they wanted new leadership, he said.
His colleagues were more openly disgusted. Nabil Sha'ath, the PA Planning Minister, flatly termed the Bush approach a failure.
His ministerial colleague Saeb Erekat said the demand for new leadership was unacceptable. And the PA cabinet secretary Ahmed Abdel-Rahman charged that Mr Bush had "mixed up" the concepts of terrorism and resistance.
Struggling to find positive aspects to the speech, Mr Erekat noted that Mr Bush had "mentioned 'end of occupation'; he mentioned 1967 borders."
Indeed, Mr Bush did speak of the need for Israel to end its occupation, but conditioned such a step on a raft of dramatic Palestinian reforms and "a settlement negotiated between the parties."
The US President did not, in fact, speak of the 1967 borders at all, but rather referred to an "Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognised borders."
The absence of a reference to the 1967 borders as a framework for a permanent accord, indeed, was only one of innumerable elements of the speech that prompted Mr Sharon's appreciative telephone call.
But primarily, the delight in the Israeli Prime Minister's office stemmed from Mr Bush's endorsement of the Israeli view that Mr Arafat and the PA, as Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit put it, "are not only not fighting terror, but also supporting it, sometimes even planning it and executing it."
Beyond the respective sides' anger and rejoicing, however, there was also an acknowledgement that Mr Bush has offered no workable recipe for ending 21 months of conflict.
Mr Arafat shows no sign of readiness to stand aside, and were he to do so, there is no reason to believe that a more moderate figure would be elected in his stead.
A recent opinion poll showed Mr Arafat's popularity at a woeful 37 per cent, but the Palestinian polling group responsible ascribed at least part of this to the popular perception that he had been overly accommodating in negotiating terms with Israel for the end of April's standoff at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and his own Ramallah headquarters complex.
Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab Knesset member and former adviser to Mr Arafat, predicted that Mr Bush's speech would actually "raise the level of violence, because the Palestinian response will be to increase support for Yasser Arafat."
The US President, Mr Tibi said, "is the most hated person among Palestinians. He is competing with Ariel Sharon for this title."