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Israel Offers Palestinians Phased Truce
Sharon offered the limited truce in secret talks last week with senior Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia. There was speculation that the meeting -- the prime minister's first with a Palestinian negotiator in about a year -- was aimed at persuading Labor to join his coalition.

Labor has said it would not enter a Sharon-led government unless he agreed to withdraw from the Gaza Strip immediately and resume peace talks.

The director of Sharon's office, Dov Weisglass, denied any such political motivation to the meeting, which he attended.

In talks with Qureia, Sharon did not mention a U.S.-backed plan for Palestinian statehood by 2005. Instead, he reiterated support for a provisional state in parts of the West Bank and Gaza as a long-term interim solution, said a Palestinian official close to the talks. Palestinians have rejected such a plan.

Regarding a gradual truce, Sharon proposed that Israeli troops withdraw from Palestinian areas where militants have been subdued by Palestinian security forces, Weisglass said.

Similar arrangements have failed in the past, in part because Palestinian security forces weakened by Israeli military strikes have lost control in many areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and because Israel has refused to stop killing Palestinian militants in targeted attacks.

A gradual cease-fire took hold for a short while in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, but fell apart after a suicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem on Nov. 21 in which 11 people were killed. Israel reoccupied Bethlehem, the bomber's hometown, following the attack.

Since June, Israel has reoccupied every West Bank Palestinian town and city, except Jericho, essentially overturning autonomy the Palestinians received in 1994-95 interim peace deals.

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat played down the latest Israeli-Palestinian contacts. ``It's only brainstorming where everybody can have a vision for the position of the other side,'' he said after the weekly Palestinian Cabinet meeting.

The Palestinians say formal negotiations must pick up where they left off two years ago, when Israel offered to withdraw from Gaza and much of the West Bank. Sharon rejects that demand, saying his predecessors made too many concessions.

Arafat has welcomed the renewal of talks, noting that he offered to restart negotiations immediately after Sharon's election victory Jan. 28.

Sharon has repeatedly called for Arafat's removal, and several of his ministers have raised the idea of expelling Arafat from the region.

The United States and Europe have repeatedly called for Arafat's removal from power and the pressure to do so will increase once the United States achieves its goals in Iraq, Weisglass said.

``It does not mean that he will be removed from the region or that his leadership will be physically ended,'' the top Sharon aide told Israeli Radio on Saturday, essentially ruling out Arafat's expulsion.

The daily Yediot Ahronot on Sunday quoted a senior Israeli official as saying Sharon and President Bush have agreed that after the Iraq crisis is resolved, Arafat will be removed from power if he refuses to hand control to a prime minister.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html