MIDDLE EAST: In a series of hardline pronouncements in interviews to mark today's Jewish New Year festival, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, adamantly ruled out any compromise over Israeli rule throughout Jerusalem.
He also expressed profound relief that the collapsed Oslo framework for peace with the Palestinians "no longer exists".
Alluding to the efforts of the previous Israeli government, led by Mr Ehud Barak, to make peace with Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority two years ago during summit talks at Camp David and at Taba in Egypt, Mr Sharon said firmly: "We're not going back to those places."
Mr Saeb Erekat, the former Palestinian peace negotiator, said Mr Sharon's comments proved his desire "to replace negotiations with dictates that are imposed by his tanks".
The Prime Minister reiterated his implacable opposition to direct negotiations with Mr Arafat, who he said had always intended to "gradually bring about the end of Israel".
Asserting that the Palestinian people would today get rid of their leader if they could, Mr Sharon said he would soon hold talks with a senior Palestinian figure, who he declined to name, but whom he said wanted to chart a path out of two years of Intifada conflict.
"For peace," he said, "we'll go far," adding that the Israeli-Arab conflict could end only when the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world genuinely accepted the Jews' right to statehood in the homeland.
In Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians, one a member of the Al-Aksa Brigades. Palestinian sources said the troops raided a militant hideout; the Israeli army said it fired on armed men "moving suspiciously" during a curfew.
Meanwhile, an internal Israeli army investigation has concluded that soldiers followed "correct procedure" in three incidents in recent weeks in which 13 Palestinian civilians were killed.
The Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, ordered the probe into the fatalities, which included five deaths in the course of a botched assassination attempt on a leading Hamas member, involving rocket fire from army helicopters.
The US will give Israel sufficient warning before any attack on Iraq to allow time to prepare for expected counterattacks against it by Baghdad, Mr Sharon said yesterday.
He spoke as Israeli media reported that three more Patriot anti-missile batteries have been deployed near the port city of Haifa, the town of Gedera and the Red Sea resort of Eilat.
Israel has already deployed two batteries of the more advanced Arrow anti-missile system, and a Patriot battery near the nuclear reactor in the Negev Desert.