Arafat wants total truce

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat declared a commitment to reaching a total ceasefire with Israel in a letter given to envoys of the peacemaking "Quartet", Palestinian officials said yesterday.

But the letter cited conditions, including an international observer force to help enforce US-led peace moves, that Israel has already rejected. Israeli officials swiftly dismissed Arafat's initiative as a ploy to avoid threatened expulsion.

The four-month-old "road map" peace plan sponsored by the international Quartet has been stymied by a relapse into tit-for-tat bloodshed in recent weeks with Washington preoccupied by turmoil in occupied Iraq and a looming election campaign at home.

Violence continued heedless of diplomacy by the Quartet, which consists of the European Union, United States, United Nationals and Russia, with Israeli troops killing a wanted Palestinian Islamic militant in the West Bank yesterday.

In a move that could ease tensions with the Palestinians, a deal appeared to be in the making under which Israel may free Marwan Barghouthi, a leader of Arafat's Fatah faction, in a prisoner exchange with the Lebanese guerilla group Hizbollah. A senior Israeli security source told Reuters: "An agreement could be struck soon, but it's not fixed yet."

With German mediation, Israel has been negotiating with Hizbollah for the release of an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers believed to have died after capture on the Lebanese frontier three years ago.