Palestinian leader 'close' to ceasefire deal with militants

New President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday he was close to reaching a deal with militants to cease attacks on Israelis, a step needed to relaunch Middle East peacemaking.

"The dialogue is making very good progress... I can say that we are bound to reach an agreement very soon," Mr Abbas told Palestine Television in an excerpt from an interview to be aired later in the day.

Palestinian militant leaders had earlier signalled they would help maintain calm in Gaza for at least a month but denied Israeli accounts that they had committed to a formal ceasefire at the behest of the moderate Abbas.

Mr Abbas, elected this month as Yasser Arafat's successor, has been trying to get militants to call off a four-year-old armed revolt so he can start negotiating for statehood in Israeli-occupied territories.

But underscoring the challenge facing peacemakers, a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said only an interim deal was possible in the foreseeable future. Palestinians seek a final treaty giving them a sovereign state.

Palestine Television said that during the interview Mr Abbas stressed Israel had "responsibilities it must carry out" for a ceasefire to work.

Israel must "halt its assaults on Palestinian people, cities and villages, stop chasing fugitives, return deportees to their homes and most importantly (deal) with the issue of (releasing) prisoners," the official television quoted him as saying.

Earlier, Palestinian militants signalled they would shun further attacks on Israelis unless provoked while conducting talks with Mr Abbas expected to go on for about a month, when a firm decision about a ceasefire could be reached.

Both Israel and the militants have avoided going first in declaring a truce. But relative quiet has taken hold in Gaza since Mr Abbas began trying to swing Palestinian gunmen behind his agenda of non-violence.

In a further sign of the transformed atmosphere, Mr Sharon held a cabinet meeting yesterday in Sderot, a southern Israeli town that had been hit by rocket fire from nearby Gaza until a few days ago.

"There is now calm. We don't know if this is a genuine change yet. We hope so. But one thing is clear - if terrorism resumes, we will act (militarily)," said Mr Sharon, who called the cabinet session in Sderot an act of solidarity with its people.

Militants linked the lull to ongoing dialogue with Mr Abbas. "We are still studying the issue of a ceasefire and there has been no decision," said Palestinian Abu Qusai, spokesman for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an autonomous armed faction within Mr Abbas's Fatah national movement.

"But these talks should go on without any (violent) escalation, including by our side. This is not a ceasefire. This is a Palestinian tactic to avoid giving the enemy any pretext to escalate the situation during the dialogue which would foil it."

Israel said it understood Mr Abbas had extracted an agreement from the main militant groups to a month-long truce in return for a share in governing, and Israel was ready to suspend military operations if calm proved durable.

Violence in Gaza has dramatically subsided, especially since Mr Abbas's deployment of 2,000 paramilitary security police in the north half of the territory on Friday with orders to stop militants targeting Israelis.

Security men have yet to fan out in south Gaza and isolated violence has continued, albeit isolated and low-level.

Israel plans to evacuate settlers from Gaza this year, a move US-led mediators count on to kickstart peace talks. But Israel also aims to keep larger West Bank settlements for good.

Sharon adviser Zalman Shoval said Mr Abbas's demand, echoing Mr Arafat, for a total Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East war was impossible and therefore "there will be no final accord in our generation, in my opinion".