Palestinians Welcome Israel Bid for Talks

Palestinian leaders on Saturday welcomed Israeli offers to resume peace talks but said any negotiations must come with efforts to stop violence and halt Jewish settlement building.

A new round of meetings also depends in part on whether the Palestinians can complete formation of a new government in the coming days. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, who is leading an emergency government with a one-month mandate, has until Tuesday to form a full Cabinet.

He has been unable to do so, mainly because of intense wrangling with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat over ministerial choices.

In the West Bank city of Nablus Saturday, a Palestinian man riding a motorcycle was shot and killed in a refugee camp. The military said soldiers shot the man after he refused calls to stop, ignored warning shots and fled from troops.

The military said the man, Mohammed Hamad, 23, was lightly wounded in the leg. But an Associated Press reporter saw the man’s body in a hospital morgue with two gunshot wounds to the chest.

New Israeli-Palestinian contacts would likely try to pick up the stalled U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan, which aims to end three years of fighting and create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Progress on the first stages of the plan withered amid weeks of new fighting and the failure of both sides to meet their key obligations.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said earlier this week that he was willing to hold talks with Qureia, reversing previous Israeli suggestions that it would not deal with the new Palestinian prime minister because he was too close to Arafat. Both Israel and the United States have sought to sideline Arafat, believing he is closely linked to terrorism.

Qureia responded Saturday, saying that no meeting with Sharon was immediately forthcoming, but there were contacts between the two sides.

“We have not studied the issue of a meeting, but there are contacts with the Israelis,” Qureia said. At the same time, Qureia is trying to restart talks with Hamas and other militant groups aimed at persuading them to stop suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis.

Israeli leaders rejected a similar course plotted by his predecessor, calling it insufficient and insisting the Palestinians dismantle the violent radical groups, a step required by the “road map” plan.

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Cabinet minister in charge of negotiations, said the Palestinians were always ready for talks but Israel must stop construction in Jewish settlements built on West Bank and Gaza, lands the Palestinians want for a future state.

“Those who want to resume a meaningful peace process, resume negotiations, must stop settlements, must stop walls, must stop the fait accompli policies … and give the peace process the chance it deserves,” Erekat said.

On Friday, Israeli media reported that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz also planned to hold meetings next week with Palestinian officials.

Meanwhile, legislators from Arafat’s Fatah faction met Saturday in Ramallah and picked a top Fatah official as their candidate to be parliament speaker, a position Qureia left vacant when he became prime minister.

The nominee, Rafiq al-Natche, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and former labor minister, was the most likely candidate to become the new speaker.

Later Saturday, thousands of Israelis were expected to gather in a Tel Aviv plaza where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot and killed to mark the eighth anniversary of his assassination by an extremist Jew opposed to his peace efforts.

On Friday, vandals spray-painted graffiti on a memorial on the spot where Rabin was shot during a 1995 peace rally. Sharon phoned Rabin’s daughter, former legislator Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, to express his shock at what he called an “ugly and horrible” act.

The words “Kahane was right” – a reference to Rabbi Meir Kahane, an ultranationalist and anti-Arab leader – were also spray-painted on a poster of Rabin hung in the square.

Workers used high-pressured water sprayers to clean white paint from the black memorial stones and plaque in the plaza.