Israeli Train Attacked After High - Level Talks
A bomb planted under an Israeli passenger train wounded its driver Sunday in an attack that clouded prospects for easing Israeli restrictions on Palestinians in seven reoccupied West Bank cities.

The blast, which police called a terror attack, occurred only hours after Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Palestinian leaders that Palestinian violence was delaying steps to relieve civilian suffering in the West Bank.

Saturday's high-level Israeli-Palestinian meeting was tinged by Palestinian anger at Israel's tentative plan to deport from the West Bank to the fenced-in Gaza Strip relatives of militants who provide a ``supportive environment'' for suicide bombings.

``It was made clear to them -- and they are starting to understand -- that terrorism is hurting them as well as us,'' Peres told Israel Radio after meeting Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel-Razzak al-Yahya and peace negotiator Saeb Erekat.

Erekat told Reuters the Palestinian side objected to the plan, a measure he said would be a war crime.

Israeli officials said future suicide bombers could be deterred by the prospect their relatives would be exiled, an argument that has drawn criticism from Israel's closest ally, the United States, and the United Nations.

The Palestinian militant group al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said in a statement Sunday that it would retaliate for any such Israeli plan by striking ``senior Zionist officials' families.''

A bomb placed on railway tracks near the central Israeli town of Rehovot exploded as a double-decker passenger train passed by, wounding its driver, police and rescue workers said. Police said the 11-pound remote-control bomb planted by Palestinians did not derail the train on a route between the northern town of Binyamina to the port city of Ashdod in the south and packed with soldiers returning to base.

The incident followed the killing by Palestinian militants of 12 people in Israel and near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank this week despite the presence in seven Palestinian cities of Israeli forces on an open-ended mission to stop such attacks.

Palestinian officials have said reoccupation and curfew make it impossible for their security forces to function.

Israeli political sources said Israel proposed paying the Palestinians 10 percent of the two billion shekels ($420.8 million) in tax levies it owes on condition an oversight team with U.S. involvement ensures the money does not go toward funding attacks.

This week, Finance Ministry Director-General Ohad Marani is to meet Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad.
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