MIDDLE EAST: Israel said yesterday that the killing of a Palestinian "master bomb-maker", who it blamed for the deaths of more than 100 Israelis, had dealt a major blow to the militant Islamic group Hamas, which vowed to avenge the man's death.
While Israel hailed a killing which Palestinians called state-sponsored assassination and continued to occupy seven West Bank cities, the country's prime minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, said that his government was beginning discussions on future peace moves.
"The time has not come to give details of the steps we are taking, but I can tell you we are now in the middle of a thought process on the way we can achieve . . . what everyone likes to call a peace horizon," he told reporters.
But Mr Sharon again insisted that no peacemaking could begin until "terrorism stops".
The Israeli defence minister, Mr Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, delivered his own message on peace in a speech to his centre-left Labour Party in which he called for the establishment of a Palestinian state and said that the dismantling of some Jewish settlements would be inevitable.
Underscoring a key point of contention with his coalition partner, Mr Sharon, the defence minister said that the building of settlements in the heart of the Gaza Strip and in certain areas of the West Bank had been a mistake.
"There will be no choice but to evacuate them within the framework of a peace agreement," Mr Ben-Eliezer added, ruling out any unilateral uprooting of settlements on land Israel had occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
Earlier, Mr Sharon hailed the killing on Sunday of the Hamas bomb-maker Muhamad al-Taher and one of his lieutenants in the West Bank city of Nablus as a "very important operation" to eliminate "a murderer who committed the most horrific crimes".
Meanwhile, the Palestinian information minister, Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo, told Reuters: "We condemn the assassinations of two Palestinians in Nablus. This is Sharon's plan to escalate the situation."
The military wing of Hamas said in a statement: "More potential martyrs are joining the queue, waiting patiently to meet their god.
The invasion of our cities, villages and refugee camps will not bring security to the Zionists. They must either leave or die on our land."
The US is looking to envoys from the diplomatic "quartet" on the Middle East to begin to formulate a new work plan for Palestinian reforms, including a change in leadership, the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said yesterday.
Depending on their progress, Mr Powell said in an interview he would then travel abroad to meet his European and Arab colleagues to polish the finer points of the plan.
He said envoys for the quartet's members, who are to meet today in London, would each bring ideas on how to proceed with efforts to "transform" the Palestinian leadership in line with the strategy President announced last week. - (Reuters, AFP)