Israel and Palestinians discuss easing clampdown

Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs met late yesterday on ways to ease Israel's military clampdown in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, after the Palestinian cabinet gave the proposal preliminary approval.

As the talks - seen as a trial gesture to restore security cooperation - went ahead, a delegation of Palestinian ministers arrived in Washington for two days of talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell and other U.S. officials.

It will be the highest level meeting between the two sides since President George W. Bush called in June for the removal of Yasser Arafat as Palestinian president.

But the pall of violence still hung heavily over the Middle East.

Five Palestinian militants and a policeman were killed yesterday by Israeli gunfire, and a leader of the Islamic group Hamas, responsible for a number of deadly suicide bombings, urged the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The Palestinian cabinet met in the West Bank city of Ramallah before the security talks to discuss Israel's proposals to ease its military clampdown imposed after a series of suicide attacks.

"There is preliminary approval," minister Nabil Shaath said after Arafat and ministers discussed the idea.

A spokeswoman at Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's office said military and Shin Bet internal security officials met Palestinian counterparts "to follow up after the Palestinians said 'yes' to the (Gaza) proposal".

She said Ben-Eliezer, who held the first senior-level meeting with Palestinian officials in months on Monday night, did not attend the talks with Arafat's security adviser Mohammed Dahlan and three security chiefs.

Army radio said Avi Dichter, the head of Shin Bet, and Major-General Giora Eiland were the main Israeli participants.

Under the proposal, Israel would redeploy its troops and ease conditions in the Gaza Strip before pulling its forces out of West Bank cities once violence ebbed and the Palestinian security forces took control and reined in militants.

Israeli forces killed four Palestinian militants in an exchange of fire in the West Bank city of Tulkarem yesterday.

An Israeli sniper also shot dead a leading Hamas militant, Hussam Hamdan, and troops killed a Palestinian policeman during a raid in northern Gaza.

A Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, vowed revenge for the death of Hamdan, a 27-year-old member of the group's military wing.

"I demand and urge the military apparatus of Hamas to target...Sharon personally and to target his house and his son," Rantissi told Reuters. The organisation is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Hamdan had escaped two earlier Israeli attempts on his life.

The armed wing of Hamas, already incensed by the death of one of its leaders in an Israeli air strike last month, also vowed more attacks to avenge the "blood of martyrs".