August 17, 2003	Sunday	Jumadi-us-Sani 18, 1424

TEL AVIV, Aug 16: Israel stressed on Saturday it would never allow the return of Palestinian refugees to its territory, rejecting a Palestinian claim that such a right was guaranteed in the roadmap.

Government spokesman Avi Pazner said the roadmap says “absolutely nothing” about the right of return for refugees as asserted by Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath in Beirut on Friday.

“This statement (by Shaath) is detrimental to its implementation,” Mr Pazner said of the international blueprint.

“Israel has no intention, under any circumstance and within any framework, of accepting the return of refugees in Israeli cities which Nabil Shaath terms Palestinian cities,” Mr Pazner said.

ARAFAT SUSPICIOUS: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat wants international guarantees of safe return before accepting an Israeli offer to leave the West Bank for a brief visit to Gaza, a senior adviser said on Saturday.

Mr Arafat, accused by Israel of fomenting violence over the past three years in a Palestinian uprising for statehood, has been trapped by Israeli troops in his half-demolished Ramallah compound for 18 months. He denies encouraging bloodshed.

Security sources said on Friday that Israel had agreed to permit Yasser Arafat to make one trip lasting several hours to Gaza to pay final respects to a sister who died this week and was buried in the territory.

Commenting on the offer, senior Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rdainah told reporters: “We are asking for real guarantees from the Quartet, because the Israeli government does not live up to its commitments.”

The Quartet — the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — are sponsors of the Middle East roadmap calling for an end to violence and the start of reciprocal steps leading to the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005.

In a bid to bolster a truce crucial to the roadmap, Israel agreed on Friday to hand security control of four West Bank cities to Palestinian authorities by the end of this month, security sources said.

The six-week-old unilateral ceasefire declared by militant factions frayed badly this week with two Palestinian suicide bombings avenging continued Israeli army raids that have killed some wanted militants and netted dozens more.

MILITANTS DISMISS CITIES DEAL: The security sources said any further Palestinian attacks would scuttle the accord on handing over cities reached by Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and Palestinian Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan after a weeks-long impasse over how to implement the peace plan.

Militants dismissed the deal as “worthless” as Israel had not dropped a policy to hunt them down for previous attacks in the uprising.

Abu Rdainah called the accord insufficient. “Israel should withdraw from all cities in order to have a genuine withdrawal,” he said.

Whether Friday’s deal would be carried out was uncertain at best as the militant group Islamic Jihad threatened retribution “like an earthquake” after Israeli troops killed its Al Khalil commander in a shootout on Thursday after trying to arrest him.

An Israeli defence ministry spokeswoman said Mofaz agreed to pull back forces from Jericho and Qalqilya early next week and the larger cities of Ramallah and Tulkarm in about two weeks.

“There are three conditions for this transfer — that they (Palestinian police) fight terror, establish an apparatus to neutralize wanted terrorists and that there are no terrorist attacks in this (handover period),” she said.

Israel and the United States have called repeatedly on Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to dismantle militant groups as mandated by the roadmap.

Palestinian officials, demanding in turn that Israel honour its commitments under the roadmap, such as pulling troops back to positions held before the uprising began in Sept 2000, have said such a crackdown could cause civil war.—Reuters