March 20, 2002	Wednesday	Muharram 5, 1423

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TEL AVIV, March 19: Israel said on Tuesday it had completed its withdrawal from autonomous Palestinian areas, clearing a major obstacle to US efforts to broker a ceasefire.

Despite the Israeli announcement claiming to have completed its withdrawal, a Palestinian security official and witnesses said the Israeli army still had troops stationed in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Intermittent clashes between the Palestinians and Israelis continued in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, leaving three Palestinians and an Israeli army officer dead.

As US Vice President Dick Cheney and special envoy Anthony Zinni pressed their peace bid, they faced growing Palestinian ire over Cheney’s failure to schedule talks with Yasser Arafat.

The Palestinians quickly accused the vice president of a pro-Israel bias as he plunged into talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. They threatened to boycott his trip unless he met Arafat.

“We are really surprised that a US vice president coming to the region to discuss serious issues, mainly the peace process, intends to meet with one and not the other,” said Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.

US officials have not ruled out a Cheney-Arafat meeting, but President George W. Bush, travelling in the United States, said it was up to Zinni because “he’s the man on the ground”.

Cheney arrived with a strong reaffirmation of Washington’s “unshakeable” commitment to Israel’s security and an appeal to Arafat “to renounce once and for all violence as a political weapon”.

The Israeli army said it had pulled out from the Bethlehem sector of the West Bank and the north of the Gaza Strip, the last areas occupied after Israel’s biggest offensive in Palestinian territories in 35 years.

The withdrawals completed a process begun on Friday. They were decided on Monday at the first high-level joint security talks held since the Israeli push touched off an unprecedented wave of bloodshed three weeks ago.

“The Israeli army withdrew during the night from positions it was occupying in the territories situated in Area A in the Bethlehem sector and in the north of the Gaza Strip,” a military spokesman said in a statement.

Area A refers to sectors ceded to Palestinian security and administrative control by the 1993 Oslo peace accords. Israeli tanks rolled into these localities late last month in a new move to curb the intifada.

Their withdrawal was a major condition posed by the Palestinians for a ceasefire.

PALESTINIANS HAVE DOUBTS: Palestinian security officials said an Israeli tank and jeeps made a new incursion on Tuesday, moving 600 metres into Palestinian-run land near Beit Lahia.

“Until now, the Israeli army has not pulled out its troops stationed in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia”, one official said.

Witnesses said Israeli tanks and jeeps were still visible in these areas.

The first steps back from weeks of deepening violence and mistrust came as Cheney arrived on Monday on the latest leg of his Middle East tour to reinforce the peace mission Zinni began on Thursday.

Cheney’s 11-nation regional swing was essentially aimed at scouting Arab support for Washington’s “war on terrorism” and possible moves against Iraq.

But he threw his weight behind efforts to ease Israeli-Palestinian tensions which threatened to compromise his lobbying efforts.

Zinni’s mission bore its first fruits on Monday as the retired Marine Corps general presided over the first high-level security contacts between the two sides since Feb 27.—AFP