MIDDLE EAST: In a rare public display of parental bitterness at the death of a child-turned-suicide bomber, Mr Kamal Abu Saud, whose son Sabih blew himself up in the West Bank yesterday after failing to enter Israel to carry out an attack, castigated the extremists who had recruited him.
Sabih Abu Saud (16) is said to have tried to enter Jerusalem on Sunday to detonate the explosives he was carrying about his person. Failing to get through heightened Israeli security restrictions, he spent the night in Ramallah, and was hiding out in the West Bank village of Azun when Israeli troops, acting on an intelligence tip-off, converged on him.
He detonated his bomb, killing himself, and slightly injuring one of the soldiers. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, claimed responsibility for the bombing.
The bomber's father said he had always watched his 11 children carefully, and that Sabih had never joined an extremist group. He said he had reported the youth missing to the Palestinian Authority.
"He was just a little boy," he added, "and those who sent him should have left him alone."
Unimpressed by new efforts by the PA Prime Minister Ahmed Korei to broker an Intifada ceasefire, the Al-Aqsa Brigades are threatening further attacks on Israeli targets. Hamas, by contrast, is signalling a grudging willingness for a limited truce.
Mr Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, a leading Hamas official in Gaza, said that while the group insisted on a "continuation of resistance by all means", it was prepared to back an initiative "to avoid [deaths of] civilians on both sides. If the Israelis are ready for that, we are ready."
Hamas has also made plain, however, that it does not regard the almost 250,000 Israelis who live in settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as civilians.
Mr Korei is today attempting to finalise the composition of his government, with a dispute still rumbling between him and Mr Arafat over who will fill the post of interior minister, and how much authority that minister will enjoy over the PA's various security apparatuses.
Mr Korei has headed a small emergency cabinet for the past month, and is supposed to have his new team approved by tonight or risk leaving the PA without a government. But the fact that the Palestinian Legislative Council yesterday swore in a newly elected speaker, the Fatah veteran Mr Rafik Natshe, would suggest that Mr Korei is optimistic. Until being named Prime Minister, Mr Korei was the speaker, and the post is significant because its holder would formally take over from Mr Arafat for up to 60 days in the event of the PA president's death.
If Mr Korei does become the permanent prime minister, Israel appears keen to open diplomatic contacts with him.
Following a recent wave of domestic complaints that he was neglecting possible diplomatic opportunities, and criticism from the Israeli army chief-of-staff over the ongoing collective punishment of the Palestinians, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has sanctioned talks in recent days between his Defence Minister, Mr Shaul Mofaz, and a Palestinian team led by PA Finance Minister Salam Fayad.