Posted on 03/02/2005 7:19:21 PM PST by TexKat
Staff Sgt. William Thomas Payne, his father Carl and Maj. Gen. Pete Chiarelli, stand together after Payne was awarded the Silver Star at the cross sabers monument in central Baghdad. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. John Queen, 3rd BCT Public Affairs
Hatin, may you rest in peace. Lord have mercy.
TexKat, I thank you for the ping about this.
Bumping a must read.
Really sickening!
March 3, 2005 9:06 AM:
TOKYO (AP) - The family-hired lawyer who heads Saddam Hussein's defense team says Iraq is too dangerous for the trial.
In an interview with The Associated Press, he says authorities ought to put it off for at least a year.
The ousted Iraqi dictator has been held at an undisclosed location since his capture more than a year ago.
The lawyer (Ziad al-Khasawneh) is in Japan raising support for Saddam's defense. He says the murder of a tribunal judge this week underscores the danger. He says the judges and lawyers are going to need a "quiet area" to prepare, and with streets burning and people being killed, they can't get that in Iraq.
Last Update: Thursday, March 3, 2005. 6:29pm (AEDT):
A suicide car bomb has exploded outside the main entrance to Iraq's Interior Ministry, killing two Iraqi policemen and wounding seven others.
A senior ministry official says the car raced to the main gates of the Interior Ministry at around 7:30am (local time) and exploded when police opened fire.
"A terrorist, in a suicide car bomb, tried to force his way in to the ministry, but the guards responded quickly, firing at the car which exploded before entering the ministry grounds," the official said.
"There were two martyrs and two wounded among the police."
At al-Kindi hospital, police Major Hussein Fuad reports seven policemen are wounded.
One policeman says the suicide car bomber had driven up to the ministry's main gate hiding behind an Iraqi National Guard convoy.
Shortly before the attack, insurgents fired off a rocket-propelled grenade at an Iraqi Army checkpoint near the ministry, causing a fire.
Police cars and ambulances have rushed the wounded to al-Kindi hospital in eastern Baghdad.
The policemen carried their slumped and wounded colleagues into the emergency room, some of whom had their blue police uniforms coated in blood.
The senior Interior Ministry official says they had been on alert for such an attack.
"The party which committed this attack was known to us. We arrested some of them yesterday and two days before. We were prepared," he said.
- AFP
Thursday, 3, March, 2005:
BEIRUT, 3 March 2005 — Lebanon’s opposition demanded yesterday the full withdrawal of Syrian military and intelligence services and the resignation of Lebanese Syrian-backed security chiefs. The opposition, in a statement after a meeting, said pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud must accept these demands before they would join any discussions on forming a new government.
“The ... step that the opposition considers essential in its demands on the road to salvation and independence is the total withdrawal of the Syrian army and intelligence service from Lebanon,” said the statement read by lawmaker Ahmad Fatfat. “This step requires an official announcement from Syria’s President (Bashar Al-Assad) on the withdrawal of the Syrian forces and its intelligence from Lebanon,” he said.
Fatfat and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said the opposition would agree on taking part in discussions of forming a new government only after Lahoud accepts the demands. “These are the principles that the opposition defined ... Only if the authorities agree on these conditions we might take part (in talks on government) formation,” Jumblatt told reporters. Two weeks of demonstrations forced the pro-Syrian government of Prime Minister Omar Karameh to quit on Monday, leaving officials with a complex search for a new head of government.
The opposition yesterday held talks with the Syrian-backed Hezbollah resistance movement, which leads an anti-Israeli struggle, in the hope of persuading the group to join its ranks to win a Syrian troop pullout. With the country in crisis sparked by the Feb. 14 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah met with MP Ghazi Aridi, a close aide to prominent opposition leader Druze MP Walid Jumblatt.
After the meeting, Aridi told reporters that his talks with Nasrallah and an earlier meeting with rival Shiite leader, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, were part of opposition efforts to “engage in dialogue ...with people who can play a role in helping to save Lebanon.”
Nasrallah has also met with Christian opposition leaders. Hezbollah, which enjoys wide support from the regime, Syria and Iran, was instrumental in leading to the May 2000 Israeli troop withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation.
The group, along with other Shiite movements, has remained under the wing of the pro-Syrian regime facing a growing opposition which succeeded in forcing the resignation of Karameh.
In an efforts appreciated by all sides, Nasrallah has repeatedly called for calm and national accord. “Our only choice is dialogue if we care for Lebanon ... as the internationalization (of the issue) only complicates things,” he recently said.
Walid Sharara, a specialist in Shiite affaires, said Hezbollah was seeking to “play the role of a mediator” between the parties in the dispute. “This crisis is embarrassing Hezbollah which feels that a polarization of political life in Lebanon carries dangers and risks to limit its role as a dissuading force against Israel,” he said.
“A few months ago, Hezbollah had a free hand in defending southern Lebanon by benefiting from the backing of the state and the Lebanese society,” he said.
Hariri’s assassination has dealt a severe blow to Hezbollah which lost a strong ally in the slain billionaire tycoon. “Hariri was engaged in contacts with his European friends to prevent them from putting Hezbollah on the list of terrorist organizations,” as requested by Israel, said Nasrallah.
As the political crisis deepened, the international community piled the pressure on Syria which has dominated military and political life in Lebanon for almost three decades.
In its latest broadside, the US accused Syria of being an obstacle to democratic reform in the Middle East and linked it to last week’s suicide bombing in Israel that shook a fragile Israeli-Palestinian truce.
And top US ally Britain warned Damascus against interfering in the political process in Lebanon with elections due by the end of May. “What I do know is that the international community will not tolerate anybody trying to interfere with the right of the Lebanese people to elect their own government, that’s their right,” Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview to be aired on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
Demonstrators returned to the site yesterday, with youth groups and local nongovernment organizations calling for a concert for “freedom and truth” about the Hariri killing. Sixteen days after the attack, the body of a 19th victim from the bombing was recovered from the site of the blast by civil defense workers who struggled to keep out angry relatives complaining of negligence.
A missing Lebanese businessman’s body was dug up yesterday, after angry relatives broke through army lines to search for his remains.
Abdelhamid Ghalayini’s body was found under a thin layer of earth about three meters away from the crater left by the explosion in a seafront neighborhood of central Beirut, an officer on the scene said.
The body was discovered as a newly arrived UN fact-finding team taking part in the investigation was visiting the site. “Where is the state? Do they have no shame? We had to do it on our own! Even the UN experts were witness to that,” shouted one of the relatives.
Thu, Mar 03, 2005:
By Elizabeth Piper
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two car bombs exploded near Iraq's Interior Ministry in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least five policemen and wounding several others in relentless violence overshadowing efforts to form a new government.
A police source said the car bombs exploded just outside the heavily guarded ministry in central Baghdad, part of a guerrilla campaign to stall the formation of the new government expected to be named in the next few weeks.
Across Iraq, suicide bombers and clashes between insurgents and the U.S. military added 10 to a death toll that climbs steadily every day, and in the north gunmen sabotaged power supplies -- underscoring the problems the new ministers face.
Iraqi politicians are engaged in protracted horse-trading to fill top posts in the government, creating a new political landscape that has raised concern over sectarian tensions.
A Shi'ite alliance won a slim majority in the Jan. 30 polls, gaining power after decades of Sunni domination under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). The alliance has chosen Islamist Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister. But interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is bidding to keep his job.
The Kurds, who came second in the elections, are in a powerful negotiating position and are seen as kingmakers.
But whatever its makeup, the new government will face the daunting task of tightening security against further attacks by mainly Sunni insurgents angered over losing the privileges they enjoyed under Saddam.
Many Sunni Arabs boycotted the polls or were too afraid to vote, and the 20 percent Sunni Arab minority has little representation in Iraq's new parliament.
Iraqi officials had hoped the elections would help ease violence. But guerrillas have kept up suicide and car bombings in a campaign to topple the U.S.-backed interim government.
CLASHES, BOMBINGS, KILLINGS
In fresh violence to hit Iraq's north, two Iraqis working for a construction equipment company that supplies American contractors were killed by insurgents in Kirkuk, police said.
Nearby in Tikrit, one Iraqi national guard was killed and six wounded by gunmen and in Baquba a suicide bomber blew himself up near the local headquarters of the guard killing one civilian and wounding 14 people.
In al-Qaim, 500 km west of Baghdad near the Syrian border, three people were killed, including a woman and child, in clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents, hospital doctors said.
In Baghdad police discovered the bodies of three men who had been blindfolded and shot in the back of the head, a scene that is becoming increasingly common in Iraq.
Guerrillas also targeted energy infrastructure, blowing up a gas pipeline feeding Iraq's main power station on Thursday. The blast near Kirkuk forced two out of four turbines at the Baiji power station to shut, engineer Khaled al-Lami said.
Daily violence and killings across Iraq have fanned fears that the country might not be able to close the chapter on the decades of oppression under Saddam.
Gunmen in Baghdad on Tuesday killed a judge working for the Iraqi special tribunal set up to try the leader and his top lieutenants.
Judge Barawiz Mahmoud and his son, a lawyer, were killed as they left their home in north Baghdad in what Mahmoud's other son said was a politically motivated attack.
Mahmoud's death was the first assassination of a member of the special tribunal, which includes around 50 trial judges, investigating magistrates, prosecutors and appeals court judges.
The judge's killing came a day after the tribunal referred its first charges against defendants, saying it had enough evidence to put five former Baath party officials on trial, including Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al- Tikriti and former Deputy Prime Minister Taha Yasin Ramadan.
Wednesday, March 2, 2005:
Dearborn resident helped terror group:
Man admits he hosted meetings at his home to raise funds for militants based in Middle East.
By David Shepardson / The Detroit News
DEARBORN -- A Dearborn man pleaded guilty Tuesday to providing material support to Hezbollah, a foreign terrorist organization.
Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, 33, admitted to hosting meetings at his Dearborn home during Ramadan in 2002 and allowing a Lebanese man to solicit donations from people there for Hezbollah.
The U.S. government considers Hezbollah, a Lebanese group known as Party of God, to be a terrorist organization. The group's goals, the government says, include the eradication of "Western imperialism" from the Middle East.
Hezbollah has conducted many high-profile terrorist attacks, including the killing of a Marine lieutenant in 1989.
Under the plea deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office, Kourani faces no more than five years in prison. Under the original charge, he faced up to 15 years. He will be sentenced June 14 by U.S. District Judge Robert H. Cleland.
Federal agents found thousands of dollars and evidence of wire transfers when they searched Kourani in May 2003. He was then charged with housing an illegal immigrant.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said Kourani bribed a Mexican consular official in Beirut to get a visa to travel to Mexico. Kourani and a traveling companion then paid another man in Mexico to be smuggled across the southern U.S. border Feb. 4, 2001, the government said.
Kourani received training in weaponry, spy craft and counterintelligence in Lebanon and Iran, the government said. It also said Kourani was "a member, fighter, recruiter and fund-raiser for Hezbollah."
His brother is Hezbollah's chief of military security in southern Lebanon and oversaw Kourani's activities.
Kourani, a carpenter, has been in custody since May 2003, when federal agents searched his house on Argyle Street in Dearborn and charged him with harboring an illegal immigrant. Kourani pleaded guilty, served six months in a federal prison and was awaiting deportation in an immigration facility when he was indicted in 2004 on the terror charge.
http://www.detnews.com/2005/nation/0503/02/A05-105122.htm
Morning Gucho, all
U.S. Marine Killed in Iraq
Thu Mar 3,12:45 AM ET Top Stories - Reuters
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An American Marine was killed in action in Iraq on Wednesday, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
A statement said the Marine was killed in Babel province south of Baghdad, but gave no further details.
The attack raised to at least 1,140 the number of U.S. troops killed in combat in Iraq since the start of the war that toppled Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
Thu, Mar 03, 2005 (20 minutes ago)
By Louis Charbonneau
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has started building a research reactor that could eventually produce enough plutonium for one bomb per year, ignoring calls to scrap the project, diplomats close to the United Nations said on Thursday.
"Iran has laid the foundations for the research reactor at Arak," a Western diplomat close to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
In September, the IAEA board of governors passed a resolution calling on Iran "as a further confidence-building measure, voluntarily to reconsider its decision to start construction of a research reactor modified by heavy water."
Heavy-water reactors can be used to produce significant amounts of bomb-grade plutonium, which can then be extracted from the spent fuel.
Diplomats on the IAEA's 35-member board, as well as diplomats close to the IAEA, said they learned the foundations had been laid from photos taken by a commercial satellite.
The United States and other countries critical of Iran have questioned the need for this reactor, which is expected to be ready the end of this decade at the earliest.
"Iran has provided changing and contradictory rationales to the IAEA for this project, which would be well suited for plutonium production," the head of the U.S. delegation to the IAEA meeting, Jackie Sanders, told the IAEA board on Wednesday.
Iranian officials were not available for comment.
IAEA deputy director general Pierre Goldschmidt said earlier this week that Iran planned to proceed with the 40-megawatt heavy water research reactor project but gave no details. This size reactor could yield enough plutonium for approximately one bomb per year, diplomats and nuclear experts say.
Washington accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program. Tehran denies this, insisting its nuclear ambitions are confined to the peaceful generation of electricity.
The European Union (news - web sites) also suspects Iran is developing the capability to produce atomic arms but hopes a French, British and German offer of incentives will persuade Iran to abandon any such plans.
IAEA BOARD BACKS EU INITIATIVE
Separately, the 35 nations on the IAEA's board of governors urged Iran on Thursday to step up cooperation with U.N. inspectors and backed the EU's offer of incentives if Tehran ends all sensitive nuclear work.
Earlier this week, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran had created a "confidence deficit" by concealing parts of its atomic program for nearly two decades and urged Tehran to improve its transparency and cooperation with U.N. inspectors.
A concluding statement from this week's IAEA governing board meeting said the 35 members unanimously said it was "essential that Iran provide full transparency and extend proactive cooperation to the agency."
The conclusion also said: "Support was expressed for the negotiations currently being undertaken between Iran, France, Germany and the UK ... and (the board) expressed the hope that an agreement would be reached on long-term arrangements."
The EU's "big three" states have offered Iran a package of economic and political incentives if it abandons its uranium enrichment program, which could produce fuel for nuclear power plants or atomic weapons. Tehran has temporarily frozen most of the program but has refused to abandon it.
The United States has so far refused to join forces with the EU, but is now considering whether to actively back the European offer of incentives to Tehran -- a move that European diplomats say would significantly boost the EU3 negotiating position.
(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran)
Thu Mar 3, 8:25 AM ET:
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has threatened to resume long-range missile testing and demanded that the United States apologize for calling the reclusive country "an outpost of tyranny," official media reported.
The threat follows a Feb. 10 announcement in which North Korea officially said for the first time it had nuclear arms and was pulling out six-way disarmament talks with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea (news - web sites).
The Korean-language version of a Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report late on Wednesday quoted a Foreign Ministry statement saying North Korea had a right to test-fire missiles, despite a moratorium that has been in place for six years.
North Korea did not feel bound by the 1999 moratorium on missile testing, reached when it was in non-proliferation talks with the administration of then U.S. president Bill Clinton (news - web sites), the state news agency said.
The North said its dialogue with Washington ended with the arrival of the Bush administration in 2001 and that meant it had the right to resume missile testing.
"There is now no binding force for us on the moratorium on missile testing," the Korean-language report said. "We are not legally bound by an international treaty, or anything else on the missile issue."
North Korea has criticized the Bush administration for first branding it part of an "axis of evil" and more recently describing it as an "outpost of tyranny."
"The U.S. should apologize for his above-said remarks and withdraw them, renounce its hostile policy aimed at a regime change in DPRK (North Korea) and clarify its political willingness to co-exist with DPRK in peace and show it in practice," the report said.
An English-language version of the KCNA report omitted the missile-testing threat and held out the possibility of a return to the disarmament talks "if the U.S. takes a trustworthy and sincere attitude."
That was similar to language used last week when top leader Kim Jong-il hinted he might be willing to return to the negotiating table.
In the past, the North has resorted to sabre rattling before returning to dialogue. Analysts said such behavior was intended to bolster domestic support and keep international exposure high in a bid to strengthen its position.
In Washington, a State Department spokesman said North Korea's demand for an apology should be raised in the talks.
"There is no good reason why all states, including North Korea, shouldn't return to the six-party talks," spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. "If they have questions or issues that they want addressed then that's the place to do it."
Three inconclusive rounds of talks have been held since 2003. A fourth planned for late last year never took place.
"As far as threats to undertake tests or other military activity, that certainly is not helpful and doesn't serve a useful purpose," Ereli said.
EDGING CLOSER
North Korea stunned its neighbors in 1998 by launching a ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. The Taepodong 1 missile is believed to have a range of 1,500 miles.
The North has also tested and deployed the Rodong 1 missile with a range of about 600 miles. It is thought to be developing missiles capable of reaching the western United States.
Japan's government spokesman brushed aside the latest North Korean declaration.
"We think it is edging closer to being persuaded by other countries," Hiroyuki Hosoda told reporters, referring to the stalled talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to renounce its nuclear weapons ambitions.
"I expect a decision to resume the talks will be made shortly," he said.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, asked about his expectations for the talks, told reporters: "There are various efforts toward that goal. And I think North Korea would agree to that."
Pyongyang's official media on Feb. 22 quoted leader Kim Jong-il as telling an envoy from the North's main benefactor, China, that his nation could return to talks if the conditions were right and Washington showed sincerity.
The top U.S. negotiator to the talks reiterated that the United States had no plan to attack the country.
"We have absolutely no intention of invading North Korea," U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill said in Seoul. (Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul and Linda Sieg and George Nishihyama in Tokyo)
As a week-long US operation ends, residents and some troops worry that insurgents will soon return.
By Dan Murphy, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
HIT, IRAQ - Walking in from the desert before dawn, the marines entering the ancient city of Hit bristled with armaments.
Flak jackets bulged with extra ammo clips. Packs were heavy with spare mortar rounds and grenades. Many of the men recalled the last time they entered the city in October, calling it a miracle that none was killed in a determined insurgent ambush.
Yet pulling out of the city five days later, every one of those mortars and grenades remained intact. The 250 marines, most from Bravo Company of the 1st Marine Division's 23rd Regiment out of Houston, had fired fewer than 100 rifle rounds. There were few signs of the fighters that made Forward Operating Base Hit one of the most mortared US positions in Iraq.
It was much the same story in a recent Marine offensive across Anbar Province, the center of Iraq's insurgency. As part of "River Blitz," Marines took over trouble-spots like Hit, Haditha, Baghdadi, and Ramadi with hardly any shots being fired.
But from the upper ranks to the most junior boots on the ground, few believe the relative ease of this operation means the insurgency in Anbar is over. Instead, the militants are fleeing before the marines arrive, only to return when the marines withdraw. The temporary nature of the Marine takeovers is hampering US efforts to get local cooperation on security.
"They called it River Blitz, but it's been more like operation River Dance,'' says Sgt. Bob Grandfield, from Boston. "This is what insurgents are supposed to do. Run away when we come in. If they fight, they know we'll just kill them."
"They're very perceptive, not stupid at all, and they probably saw tanks were moved here. So they left,'' says Lt. Col Stephen Dinauer from Verona, Wisc, commander of the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, which headed up operations in Hit. "It's frustrating, because we can't be everywhere at once."
While acknowledging that most top insurgents probably fled prior to the assault, Colonel Dinauer still rates operations in Hit (pronounced Heat) a success. About 40 men were detained, and a number of weapons caches were uncovered. He also believes that insurgents in the area have been "knocked back on their heels," preventing them from planning more attacks and making it easier to move troops around the province.
But while Marines conducted their offensive in Anbar, insurgents struck elsewhere. A suicide car bomb in Hilla, south of Baghdad, killed 125 people - the deadliest single attack since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Wednesday, unknown gunmen in Baghdad shot and killed a judge involved in the trial of Mr. Hussein.
As the Marines involved in "River Blitz" pull out Anbar Province, a smaller US force is replacing them. One senior marine said he feels "guilty about leaving" Hit because he worries that insurgents will seek reprisals on residents in the absence of local police.
These sentiments echo the scaled-back expectations among troops on the ground. Gone is the talk about breaking the back of the insurgency that was floated before the November battle for Fallujah, where hundreds of militants were dug in and ready to fight.
Instead, the troops speak about a long, painstaking process of intelligence gathering, slowly constricting the corridor along the Euphrates river that has helped foreign militants move into Iraq from Syria and helped domestic militants move men and money.
And they speak about slowly finding a way to train and motivate Iraqi troops to replace the largely failed experiment with the Iraqi National Guard, which has been plagued by desertions, insurgent infiltration, and a refusal to fight because of fears of reprisals against their family members.
Patrolling Hit, a city of 100,000 people, the marines encountered no open hostility. Little boys fascinated by their guns chased after them and young men peppered them with questions in broken English. In five days in the city, one sniper was killed by the marines, and another man was killed after a drive by shooting. In Anbar Province, that's about as quiet as it gets.
But there is also little open or obvious cooperation. Just about an hour before the drive-by shooting, the owner of a house occupied by a team of marines was asked about insurgent activity in the area. "There is no resistance in the entire city of Hit,'' he said. "They left a long time ago."
In a brief meeting with marines to arrange the recovery of two insurgent bodies, a local sheikh told Maj. Derek Horst, "99.9 percent of our people are peaceful people. We don't want problems here."
Such reticence either masks sympathies with the insurgency, or more commonly fear of reprisals. Last October, insurgents moved into the city, reduced the police station to rubble, and beheaded a few locals they deemed too close to US forces. The city's police remain inactive.
Yet as marines left the meeting, another with long experience in the Hit area could hardly detain his disgust. "This guy is one of our biggest problems here. In the past, he's been whipping people up to fight."
In some cities in Anbar, civilians have been killed for simply talking to Marines, and more than a few citizens of Hit on this trip told marine officers that they should either come into the city and stay, or don't come at all, because there are no guarantees of their safety when the troops leave.
The marines say they appreciate civilian fears, but are frustrated that locals don't secure their towns on their own. "It's hard to understand sometimes why people don't stand up for themselves,'' says Sergeant Shawn Hudman of Austin, Texas.
A Palestinian policeman guards the scene of a car explosion in the West Bank city of Nablus March 3, 2005. Palestinian militants blew up a car bomb near Israeli soldiers guarding Jewish worshippers at a flashpoint shrine in the West Bank on Thursday, dealing another blow to a tattered ceasefire. (Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters)
Car Bomb Explodes Near Israeli Troops, Rattling Truce
By Atef Sa'ad
NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian militants blew up a car bomb near Israeli soldiers guarding Jewish worshippers at a flashpoint shrine in the West Bank on Thursday, dealing another blow to a frayed ceasefire.
The bombing outside Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, which caused no Israeli casualties but wounded a Palestinian mother and her four children, came two days after world leaders at a London meeting urged more forceful Palestinian action against armed groups.
Acting on President Mahmoud Abbas's orders, security forces have arrested six Palestinians this week following a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis on Friday and threatened to unravel a de facto truce, a senior official said.
But that did not prevent Thursday's attack in Nablus.
The car bomb blew up shortly after midnight as a contingent of Israeli troops guarded a group of religious Jews praying inside the shrine, an Israeli army spokesman said.
The blast damaged adjacent cars and buildings.
A Palestinian security source said a local cell from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Abbas's mainstream Fatah faction, had claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Some West Bank militants have returned to operations in recent days, undermining a de facto truce declared at a Feb. 8 peace summit by Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The army said troops also found unassembled Qassam rockets, capable of being fired into Israel, at a bomb factory discovered in the West Bank city of Jenin on Wednesday.
SHARON FACES LIKUD CENTRAL COMMITTEE
On the Israeli political front, Sharon began what was likely to be a stormy session on Thursday with his Likud party's central committee, dominated by rightist hard-liners opposed to his Gaza withdrawal plan.
Likud's policy-making body was widely expected to vote in the evening to urge party lawmakers to back a referendum on a Gaza pullout, a step Sharon has rejected as a stalling tactic. Though the vote could be a political embarrassment to Sharon, his aides said it would have no impact on the pullout timetable given the lack of a majority in parliament to pass legislation needed for a popular ballot.
Nonetheless, it would give Likud rebels another chance to vent their anger at Sharon over his "Disengagement Plan," which calls for evacuating all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank starting in July.
Israel's parliament will vote on the state budget on March 17 in a crucial ballot that will determine the fate of Sharon's government and his Gaza blueprint. Sharon has until March 31 to win approval for the 2005 budget or face an early general election that could see him lose office and lead to the shelving of a Gaza withdrawal.
But Sharon has proved himself a master of political brinkmanship and is counting on broad public support for his "Disengagement Plan" as well as Israelis' distaste at the idea of holding the third national election in four years.
Most Israelis back the plan, but many Palestinians fear Sharon only wants to trade impoverished Gaza for effective annexation of large parts of the West Bank, where the vast majority of Israel's 240,000 settlers live.
Israel took a step toward coordinating the pullout with the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday. Vice Premier Shimon Peres met Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan in Tel Aviv to discuss economic cooperation after the withdrawal.
Abbas went to Egypt on Thursday and asked President Hosni Mubarak during talks to press Israel to carry out commitments it made at the summit, which was hosted by the Egyptian leader.
Israel suspended plans to pull back forces from West Bank cities and said it would reconsider prisoner releases after the Tel Aviv suicide bombing.
Abbas, who succeeded Yasser Arafat in January on a platform of non-violence, has resisted Israeli demands for a crackdown and is instead trying to coax militants into suspending attacks. (Additional reporting by Wafa Amr and Megan Goldin in Jerusalem)
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