Posted on 03/16/2002 6:10:45 AM PST by knighthawk
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - U.S. peace envoy Anthony Zinni has held talks with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at his Ramallah headquarters, hours after Israeli tanks rumbled out of the West Bank city.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to end a three-day reoccupation of Ramallah, announced as Zinni arrived on Thursday, drew praise from U.S. President George W. Bush.
Speaking in North Carolina, Bush said the Israeli military withdrawal overnight from Ramallah and two other West Bank cities was a positive development and he was hopeful Zinni would succeed in bringing about a ceasefire in the 17-month conflict.
"I've said that one of the things we've got to do...is to establish the conditions for eventual peace. I appreciate Prime Minister Sharon's decision," Bush added.
Underscoring the difficulties facing peacemakers were reports of more violence on Friday night in the West Bank.
Battles raged between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen in Bethlehem and Hebron where a Palestinian man was killed during a firefight that erupted after a group linked to Arafat's Fatah faction shot an Israeli soldier.
In Gaza, doctors said an 11-year-old Palestinian girl was critically wounded after being shot in the head. Her family said she was shot by Israeli soldiers, which the army denied.
Elsewhere in Gaza an explosion killed a Palestinian woman and her four children travelling in a donkey cart. Palestinian officials blamed the Israelis, who flatly denied involvement.
Palestinian medical sources said Israeli forces killed two Palestinian policemen in separate incidents near the Rafah and Sufa border crossings in the southern Gaza Strip. The army said soldiers shot at men planting roadside bombs in the area.
In northern Gaza, the army said troops shot dead a gunman near the Jewish settlement of Dugit.
COLLABORATORS KILLED
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to Arafat's Fatah faction, said its members shot dead two alleged collaborators in the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday night.
Zinni, a former Marine Corps general who had already held talks with Sharon and other Israeli leaders, spent more than an hour with Arafat on Friday evening.
He told reporters afterwards: "All the meetings I've had with both sides were positive. I sensed everyone is committed to get out of this terrible situation...
"I am encouraged that we are going to identify the mechanisms that allow us to do that, and I think that in the next three days that we can start on my mission..."
Arafat told his guest: "I repeat in front of you...our full commitment to the peace process that I signed with my late partner, Yitzhak Rabin." Arafat and then Israeli prime minister Rabin signed the 1993 Oslo peace accords, but Rabin was assassinated in 1995 and the peace process faltered.
In September 2000, after efforts to forge a peace treaty broke down, Palestinians launched a revolt against Israeli occupation. To date more than 1,000 Palestinians and 340 Israelis have been killed.
The army entered Ramallah, the Palestinians' commercial and political hub in the West Bank, on Monday night in what it said was part of a general sweep for militants who attack Israelis.
The operation, involving some 150 tanks, was part of Israel's biggest military offensive since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
As well as Ramallah, the army said on Friday that its forces had also quit positions in the West Bank cities of Qalqilya and Tulkarm but remained in Palestinian territory on the outskirts of another four. They also formed a cordon around Ramallah.
DESTRUCTION
Ramallah residents ventured into the streets for the first time in three days to see the damage left by the tanks. Some were jubilant at the troops' departure, firing in the air. But others were left to rue the destruction about them.
"The damage in the infrastructure, the water, the electricity, the sewage, the roads -- tens of millions of dollars," Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said.
Arafat said the withdrawal was a trick. "The tanks are still outside Ramallah. They have not withdrawn from most of our towns."
Against the backdrop of recent Palestinian suicide attacks inside Israel, a new opinion poll showed Sharon's popularity slipping further, with 60 percent of Israelis saying they were dissatisfied with him.
The fall reflected Sharon's political dilemma in Israel, where he has been under pressure from the right to take stronger action against the Palestinian Authority and from the left to return to peacemaking.
Zinni, now on his third trip to the region since November, is seeking implementation of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire and a truce-to-talks plan drawn up by an international committee under former U.S. Senator George Mitchell.
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