RAMALLAH, Sept 22: President Yasser Arafat declared a commitment to reaching a total ceasefire with Israel in a letter given to envoys of the peacemaking “Quartet”, Palestinian officials said on Monday.

But the letter cited conditions, including an international observer force to help enforce US-led peace moves, that Israel has already rejected. Israeli officials swiftly dismissed Arafat’s initiative as a ploy to avoid threatened expulsion.

The four-month-old “road map” peace plan sponsored by the international Quartet has been stymied by a relapse into tit-for-tat bloodshed in recent weeks with Washington preoccupied by turmoil in occupied Iraq and a looming election campaign at home.

Violence continued heedless of diplomacy by the Quartet, which consists of the European Union, United States, United Nationals and Russia, with Israeli troops killing a wanted Palestinian Islamic militant in the West Bank on Monday.

In a move that could ease tensions with the Palestinians, a deal appeared to be in the making under which Israel may free Marwan Barghouthi, a leader of Arafat’s Fatah faction, in a prisoner exchange with the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

A senior Israeli security source told Reuters: “An agreement could be struck soon, but it’s not fixed yet.”

With German mediation, Israel has been negotiating with Hezbollah for the release of an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers believed to have died after capture on the Lebanese frontier three years ago.

Israel has also sought information at least on the fate of air force navigator Ron Arad, shot down over Israeli-occupied south Lebanon in 1986. Israeli forces withdrew in May 2000.

Hezbollah has sought the release of 15 Lebanese including guerrilla leaders Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani, seized by Israel in 1989 and 1994 as bargaining chips for Arad, as well as Palestinians, Syrians and Jordanians held by Israel.

Barghouthi, a leader of the three-year-old Palestinian uprising for statehood, is on trial in Israel charged with orchestrating killings of 26 Israelis. He denies involvement in violence.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters that Arafat received Quartet envoys from the EU, UN and Russia in his half-demolished West Bank compound where Israeli forces have confined him for almost two years.

“President Arafat handed them a letter in which he said he is committed to a total cessation of violence against Israelis anywhere, provided the Quartet intervenes to revive the road map and sends monitors to commit the two sides to implement it.”

Erekat said Arafat also reiterated his support for the road map, which calls for an end to violence and the start of reciprocal steps leading to a Palestinian state by 2005.—Reuters