Israel's new leader Mr Ariel Sharon has met the man he beat in this week’s prime ministerial election Mr Ehud Barak to discuss forming a coalition.
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Mr Ehud Barak and Mr Ariel Sharon
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Leaders of Mr Barak's Labour party said they wanted Mr Sharon to explain how he would make peace with the Palestinians.
A political source in Mr Sharon's office said the prime minister-elect had spoken by telephone with senior Palestinian negotiator Mr Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, last night.
"Abu Mazen expressed the will of the Palestinian leadership to resume the talks with Israel. Sharon told him that the condition for the resumption of talks was the complete halt to violence and terror," the source said.
He quoted Mr Sharon as saying he was committed to the peace process, and willing to ease an Israeli economic blockade of Palestinian areas, but that violence must end first.
"We want to see the Palestinian Authority acting against the terror infrastructure...I'm not an easy negotiator, but my word is my word and my red lines are very clear," Mr Sharon said.
The tough former general, reviled by Arabs for orchestrating the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which led to massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Israeli-backed militias, faces a late March deadline to form a coalition and pass the state budget.
If Mr Sharon cannot do either, he will face a new poll for prime minister and parliament. If he cannot forge a deal with Labor, he will have to lean on religious and nationalist parties likely to demand a harder attitude toward Palestinians.
Lower-level talks between Likud and Labor began on Thursday, just hours after a car bomb exploded in a religious Jewish area of Jerusalem, slightly hurting a woman.
A Palestinian unit calling itself the Sabra and Shatila Martyrs Group, after a 1982 massacre in Beirut for which Mr Sharon was found indirectly to blame, claimed responsibility.
It said the unit was part of the previously unknown Palestinian Popular Resistance Forces. In a separate statement, another previously unknown group, the Popular Army Front, claimed the attack.
Palestinian gunmen traded fire with Israeli soldiers guarding the Jewish settlement of Psagot in the West Bank overnight. Witnesses said tracer rounds and flares lit the night sky for several hours, but no casualties were reported.
PA