US envoy urges real peace steps

A US envoy urged Israel and the Palestinians yesterday to take real steps to put into motion a US-backed peace roadmap whose revival awaits a still-unscheduled meeting of their prime ministers.

But bullets again spoke louder than words in the West Bank, where Israeli troops at a spot roadblock shot dead a 20-year-old Palestinian woman travelling in a taxi.

"We very much hope that concrete steps can be taken by all sides on all of the issues necessary to see progress restored," US official David Satterfield, asked about the roadmap, told reporters after meeting Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei.

Satterfield, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, met Qorei two days after declaring that Palestinian government reform key to the peace plan had all but ground to a halt.

In an assessment prepared for the "Quartet" of Middle East peacemakers - the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia - Satterfield also accused Israel of failing to ease tough travel restrictions on Palestinians.

The roadmap, the most ambitious move Washington has made towards ending three years of violence and reviving peacemaking, calls for reciprocal steps leading to the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

Speaking to reporters, Qorei said no date had been set for talks with his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon, on moving along the roadmap. Israel Radio said a summit was unlikely in the coming week and officials planned more prep-aratory meetings.

In an interview with the mass circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth on Friday, Qorei warned Israel that an internationally condemned barrier it is building inside the West Bank would kill the peace plan.

Sharon has hinted he will evacuate some Jewish colonies and set borders for a Palestinian state along the barrier, whose planned route frequently dips into the West Bank to incorporate colony blocs, should peace talks fail.

Israel says the swathe of razor-wire fencing, walls and trenches, is meant to keep suicide bombers out of its cities.

Near the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers fired at a taxi which a military source said burst through a spot roadblock and ignored warning shots to stop.

Palestinian medics said Kamleh Al Shooli, 20, one of eight passengers in the vehicle, was killed by two bullets to the chest. Two passengers who spoke to Reuters after the incident said the soldiers had not signalled for the taxi to stop.