MIDDLE EAST: Senior Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met yesterday for the first time in almost two years to discuss a summit between Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon and new Palestinian leader Mr Mahmoud Abbas, who called the contacts "promising".
But Israel's killing yesterday of a militant in the West Bank complicated Mr Abbas's efforts to persuade armed groups to agree to a ceasefire and end all attacks on Israelis.
At yesterday's meeting, Palestinian Minister Mr Saeb Erekat and Mr Dov Weisglass, a senior aide to the Israeli prime minister, discussed a truce and an end to Israeli military actions.
They will meet again next week to discuss an agenda for a Sharon-Abbas meeting. "These talks are promising in all aspects," Mr Abbas said in Ramallah.
Israel wants the summit to focus primarily on security issues, including co-ordinating Mr Sharon's planned withdrawal from Gaza later this year. An aide to the prime minister, Mr Ra'anan Gissin, said: "Our main concern is security - that the Palestinians continue to take additional steps to end the violence, terrorism and incitement." But the Palestinians want the agenda to include the release of security prisoners in Israeli jails, an end to ongoing military raids in Gaza and the West Bank, the exit of Israeli troops from West Bank cities, and the implementation of the moribund road map peace plan. Mr Erekat said no date had been set yet for a summit, but that the meeting "was conducted in a good and constructive atmosphere".
Palestinian Prime Minister Mr Ahmed Korei was less upbeat, saying that the new diplomatic contacts "will not be serious until we start discussing permanent status solutions to the conflict".
Mr Abbas has said he wants to return to the negotiating table where he plans to raise final status issues like borders, refugees and the future of Jerusalem.
Mr Sharon does not believe that a comprehensive solution to the conflict is possible - only a long-term interim agreement - and so does not want to get into final status talks.
After the calm that has prevailed during a week of ceasefire talks headed by Mr Abbas in Gaza, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group associated with the ruling Fatah party, threatened to resume attacks yesterday after soldiers killed a militant they said was trying to escape capture in the West Bank city of Qalqilya. Officers said the man was planning a suicide bombing.
Mr Abbas said ongoing Israeli raids threatened the fragile calm he has managed to orchestrate.
"The Israelis go on with such operations but they know very well that this quiet is comprehensive on our side and they must stop these actions so that our efforts will not collapse," he said.
A Palestinian girl, aged three, was killed in southern Gaza by Israeli gunfire and militants fired rockets into Israel from the Strip for the first time in a week. But the overall level of violence remained low and Palestinian policemen began deploying in southern Gaza yesterday.
The move follows Mr Abbas's deployment of Palestinian security forces last Friday in northern Gaza with the aim of preventing rocket fire.
In another move aimed at signalling to Palestinians that he is serious about restoring law and order to the streets of Gaza, the Palestinian leader ordered in bulldozers yesterday to destroy dozens of illegal structures erected by locals along the Gaza coastline.
US envoy Mr William Burns, who is in the region to promote the renewal of contacts between the sides, said yesterday that the administration had been "encouraged by steps that Mr Abbas has taken on security, by the Israeli reaction to those steps."