Israel officially notified the United Nations yesterday it had changed its mind and would delay the arrival of a UN fact-finding mission to report on its siege of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
UN Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan has agreed to an Israeli request to postpone the mission, Mr Annan's spokesman said last night after talks with Israeli Ambassador Mr Yehuda Lancry, who said Israel needed to consider the terms of reference for the team.
The UN Security Council warned Israel that "no harm must come" to Palestinian leader Mr Yasser Arafat, besieged in his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Council members also insisted that Israel lift the siege of Arafat's compound and allow him to move freely, council president Mr Sergei Lavrov, Russian ambassador to the UN, said.
The United States, which voted in the UN Security Council last Friday in favour of the Jenin mission, said it still supported the fact-finding team, a State Department official said. The Jenin camp was the scene of eight days of intense fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen, part of Israel's response to Palestinian suicide bombings.
In Jerusalem, a senior Israeli political source said the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, and the Defence Minister, Mr Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, believed some members of the team were "politically-oriented".
Meanwhile, supplies of food and water were said to be running low inside the besieged Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem yesterday, writes Peter Hirschberg.
Israeli and Palestinian officials met for their first direct talks aimed at solving the 21-day showdown between troops and armed Palestinians inside the church, but failed to yield any breakthrough.
In the West Bank town of Hebron, two Palestinian militants were killed late on Monday night in a missile attack by an Israeli helicopter. Hours later, near the spot of the missile strike, masked gunmen killed three Palestinians on suspicion of collaborating with Israel.
At the Nativity Church talks, Palestinian officials proposed that those men inside the church who are wanted by Israel - some 200 gunmen are hiding inside, along with a group of civilians and clerics - be disarmed and transferred to the Palestinian-controlled section of the Gaza Strip.
In Israel, the Palestinian proposal was viewed as a sign of the increasingly desperate situation inside the church, where an Israeli security official said supplies of food and water were almost exhausted.
Mr Sharon looked unlikely to budge as he stuck to his position that Palestinian militants barricaded in the church either surrender and face trial in Israel, or agree to be deported to another country. So far, the Palestinians have rejected the Israeli proposal.
Israel, meanwhile, continued its policy of targeting leading Palestinian militants, when an Apache helicopter fired two missiles at a car in Hebron, killing Marwan Zaloum, the local leader of the Tanzim militia, which is associated with Palestinian leader Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah party.
Israeli officials claimed Zaloum was responsible for a series of attacks, which included dispatching the Palestinian sharpshooter who killed a 10-month-old infant in Hebron last year.
Patrick Smyth adds:
A poll conducted by the Washington Post/ABC shows that a majority of Americans (54 per cent) want the US to stand aside and let the Israelis and Palestinians take the lead role in crafting a peace process; 60 per cent say they want Israel to negotiate directly with Mr Arafat.
Sixty one per cent believe the Israelis could have done more to avoid civilian casualties while 90 per cent say Mr Arafat could do more to end terrorism. The poll reflects the deep suspicion of both sides - 43 per cent believe Israel's goal is to seize the West Bank and Gaza, while the same percentage believe Mr Arafat's aim is the destruction of the state of Israel.