European foreign policy chief Mr Javier Solana yesterday urged Israeli leaders to push for a Mid- East peace conference to be held no later than the end of July, and said he believed a date should be set at the summit for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Israeli leaders, however, sounded reticent about the creation of a deadline for Palestinian statehood.
In the West Bank, an Israeli army incursion into Nablus and the nearby Balata refugee camp yesterday entered its third day, as troops continued to arrest militants and smashed down doors of buildings in what the army said was a search for explosives.
Mr Solana, who along with other US and European diplomats has been in the region in the last few days as part of the latest Middle East diplomatic push, said he hoped the conference could be held "as soon as possible. The sooner we get motion into the process, the better."
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, who met the EU diplomat yesterday in Jerusalem, said "a concentrated effort" was being made "to bring the conference . . . into being as soon as possible".
But Mr Peres, the leading dove in the Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's broad-based cabinet, was more circumspect about Mr Solana's proposal of setting a date for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, suggesting this should be the product of a negotiated settlement rather than a unilateral move. "Borders, dates and states must result from an agreement," he insisted.
Mr Sharon, who has supported the idea of a regional conference and has also said the Palestinians will one day have a state, has consistently said he will enter peace negotiations only when violence ceases. He has also said any talk of a Palestinian state was premature.
Palestinians are dismissive of Mr Sharon's proclaimed readiness to accept an independent state alongside Israel, pointing out that the Prime Minister's insistence that large swathes of the West Bank will have to remain under Israeli control even in a final settlement renders any future state unviable.
In its sweep of Nablus and Balata over the weekend, which the army said was aimed at thwarting attacks inside Israel, troops rounded up hundreds of men.
Palestinian officials said yesterday the majority had been released, but that several dozen remained in detention.
Ever since ending its massive invasion of the West Bank at the end of April, the Israeli army has been conducting daily forays into Palestinian towns and villages, significantly blurring the boundaries created by the Oslo peace accords, which have placed 42 per cent of the West Bank under total or partial Palestinian control.
Some 10 activists were arrested overnight on Saturday, four of whom Palestinians said were female students at Al-Najah University in Nablus. They said soldiers with sniffer dogs raided the dormitories in the early morning hours.
The army yesterday also blew up the Nablus home of Mr Mahmoud Titi, the local commander of the Al Aqsa Brigades militia who was assassinated by Israel on May 21st.
Mr Titi's cousin, Jihad, blew himself up in a suicide revenge attack in a central Israeli town last week, killing two people.
The army said the home was a "bomb factory" - one of the biggest it had uncovered in the West Bank - which contained dozens of explosive devices and chemical substances for manufacturing bombs.
In the Gaza Strip, the army said troops dismantled a 40 kg bomb near one of the Jewish settlements. In the past, such bombs have succeeded in severely damaging Israeli tanks.