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Roadmap virtually dead, says Arafat

* Israeli planes bombard Hizbollah post in southern Lebanon
* Abbas to quit if cabinet not fully empowered

RAMALLAH: Yasser Arafat accused Israel of killing the US-backed peace plan with its “military aggression”, CNN’s Web site quoted the Palestinian president on Wednesday as saying.

“The road map is dead, but only because of Israeli military aggression in recent weeks,” Arafat told the US network in the off-camera interview.

Arafat also accused US President George W Bush’s administration of not doing enough to keep the peace plan alive because of its preoccupation with rebuilding Iraq and next year’s presidential election, according to CNN.

However, Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior advisor to Arafat, later told AFP that Palestinians remained committed to the roadmap which he said “still exists”.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana dismissed the claims by Arafat that the roadmap was dead.

The peace initiative was very much alive and needed full support, Solana told a press conference in Beirut after talks with Lebanese officials. “I don’t want to see a statement saying that the roadmap faces death. The roadmap is alive and we have to maintain its life,” he insisted.

Palestinian officials said Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, stymied by a power struggle with Arafat, will tell parliament he will resign unless he wins authority to take key reform and peace steps.

“Abbas will ask for support for his policies or he leaves,” Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr told Reuters on Wednesday in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The premier will address parliament on Thursday to report on his performance four months after Arafat appointed him. “Abbas will reiterate that the cabinet must be fully empowered...especially in the security and administrative fields,” Amr said.

Abbas has no legal right to ask parliament for a vote of confidence, but aides said he would deem the general message conveyed by lawmakers in the debate as the verdict.

Senior Palestinian lawmakers said they were working on a compromise deal to define powers held by Arafat and Abbas and ward off a resignation by the prime minister. They said Arafat did not want Abbas to go either for fear of an international outcry.

Israeli warplanes on Wednesday bombarded a Hizbollah position in the Bayyarda hills near the town of Naqura, where the UN forces in southern Lebanon have their headquarters, Lebanese police said.

Israeli fighter-bombers fired three air-to-ground missiles into the hills at around 8pm local time and hit a position belonging to the Shiite militia, police said.

Some 18,000 Palestinians from the territories are now allowed to enter Israel to return to work, the Israeli army said on Wednesday, but Palestinian security sources said less than half that number had crossed into Israel on the first day the permission came into effect.

“Under measures designed to restore confidence, we have allowed 18,000 Palestinian workers and shopkeepers to come to work in Israel,” a statement signed jointly by the Israeli army and the Co-ordinator of Israeli Activities in the Territories said.

The office of the Palestinian general security services in Gaza City had earlier told AFP that 3,937 workers and no shopkeepers had been permitted to enter Israel. The source added that Palestinian workers from the southern Gaza Strip had been prevented from entering Israel.

Injured Palestinian dies: A Palestinian man died on Wednesday of injuries sustained during clashes with the Israeli army during an August 28 raid on the northern West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian medics said. —Agencies

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