08 October 2004	Friday	22 Shaban 1425

WASHINGTON, Oct 7: The United States has asked Israel for further clarification of comments made by a top aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who said this week that the premier wants to sabotage the roadmap for peace, US officials said on Thursday.

The State Department said Washington was pleased that Sharon's office had restated the prime minister's commitment to the peace plan but added that Dov Weisglass' comments needed additional explanation.

"It's for the Israeli government to clarify the implications of any comments made by Israeli government people or officials or people associated with the prime minister," spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. "We have, ourselves, questioned the Israelis about these statements."

Later, a senior State Department official said that despite the statement from Sharon's office, Washington has residual concerns about the remarks of Weisglass, Sharon's former chief of staff and a chief Israeli interlocutor with the United States.

"They have to explain the comments," the official told reporters. "We think they still bear some explanation." The State Department had on Wednesday said Washington was satisfied with the statement from Sharon's office on his and the Israeli government's support for the peace plan and offered no hint that US concerns about the Weisglass comments remained.

Secretary of State Colin Powell reiterated that view on Thursday, telling reporters after a meeting with new Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutake Machimura that the United States looked to Sharon, and not his aides, to set and carry out Israeli policy.

"He is the one that we listen and pay attention to," Powell said, noting the statement from Sharon's office. But the senior State Department official said the United States wanted more assurances on Israel's commitment to the roadmap because of Weisglass's closeness to Sharon and the gravity of his remarks.

"It's a job they need to do," the official said. Mr Weisglass took the United States and others aback on Wednesday when he was quoted in an interview with Israel's Haaretz newspaper as saying that Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza was a deliberate attempt to undermine the roadmap's promise of Palestinian statehood next year.

THREE KILLED: Three Palestinians, including two children, were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza on Thursday as the UN delivered aid to Palestinian families trapped in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Palestinian doctors identified the two slain children as Sliman Abu Ful and Raed Abu Zeid, both 14, and said their bodies had been ripped apart by what appeared to be a tank shell. But the Israeli army insisted that the two, targeted in the camp in northern Gaza, had been "preparing to fire an improvised rocket". "The pair were hit by a missile fired by a helicopter gunship," a spokesperson said.

"A drone flying over the area filmed two figures who were putting a rocket launcher in a firing position at an angle of 45 degrees," a second spokesman said. "The two figures moved away and there was a flash. A first attempt at firing apparently failed. The two figures then came back and we did not allow them to go ahead with a second attempt."

But witnesses at the scene told AFP the teenagers had been rummaging through the ruins of a local youth club destroyed by armoured bulldozers two days ago. They said they were hit by a tank shell and that no fire or flash had been seen at the scene.

A 17-year-old girl, Samah Udeh, was also seriously wounded in Jabaliya when Israeli soldiers opened fire from tanks at the entrance of the camp, according to Palestinian hospital sources and witnesses. -AFP