AL QUDS, July 20: Heated talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmud Abbas ended without a commitment on Sunday from Israel to release more Palestinians in its jails.

Instead the two sides agreed to form a joint committee which would consider the numbers of Palestinian prisoners who should be released from Israeli jails, Palestinian information minister Nabil Amr said.

“The most positive thing that we agreed about was that the number of prisoners which we must be released will be discussed in a joint committee,” the minister told reporters after briefing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the talks which Amr also attended.

It is understood that Palestinian prisoners minister Hisham Abdelrazeq and Avi Dichter, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, will sit on the committee.

“It was a useful meeting and I hope that we will see good results in the coming period,” Amr said.

However, another source close to Abbas said that the talks had been stormy, dominated by the plight of the veteran Palestinian leader Arafat who has been effectively confined to his headquarters in Ramallah by Israeli forces for the last 19 months.

“It was a difficult meeting. At many points they screamed at each other.

“The main topic was the siege on Arafat. Abu Mazen (Abbas’ nom-de-guerre) and his team told Sharon and the Israelis that any talk about moving ahead the situation on the ground without lifting the siege would be useless.”

Israel had agreed to “study seriously” an end to the siege of Arafat, he added.

The same source said that the two sides had clashed on the prisoners issue.

“The Israelis were talking about lists and categories and the Palestinians refused that and said any discussion on prisoner releases should be (among) the two sides,” he said.

Israel has so far refused to countenance the release of more than 350 of the estimated 6,000 Palestinians in its jails.

There had been expectations that Sharon would seek to bolster Abbas’ position by allowing the release of a small number of activists from Islamic Jihad and Hamas which are currently observing a truce, which comes with a raft of conditions including the release of all detainees.

The two sides also discussed Palestinian demands for further Israeli troop withdrawals from the West Bank after pullbacks in the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem in recent weeks as well as a removal of army checkpoints.

“We discussed about the checkpoints and cities and we declared that we are ready to control any city which Israel withdraws from,” said Amr.

ARAFAT: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat issued a decree on Sunday prohibiting incitement to violence, racial discrimination and insults to other religions.