Israeli Army Marksmen Overlook Arafat Compound
Israel put Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's compound back under the gun Tuesday, sending army marksmen to take up positions nearby amid reports militants slipped out after troops aborted a siege under U.S. pressure.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, smarting from the humiliation of having to scrap the siege without arresting wanted men inside, predicted Israel would halt Palestinian ``terror'' within a few months and pave the way for political talks.

Sharon gave no details, but he has said military action in Gaza aimed at destroying the operational capabilities of Hamas, a militant Islamic group behind dozens of suicide bombings, should be Israel's next step in what he calls a war against terror.

In a diplomatic setback for the United States in the Arab world, Washington drew Muslim anger after President Bush signed into law legislation requiring his administration to identify Jerusalem as Israel's capital in official documents.

Near Arafat's battered Muqata compound in Ramallah, marksmen took over several buildings with clear views of the complex in an apparent bid to stop militants getting away, Palestinian security officials said. The army had no comment.

Tanks and troops stormed the compound Sept. 19 after two Palestinian suicide bombings killed seven people in Israel.

Israel withdrew troops, tanks and bulldozers from the complex Sunday after a 10-day siege in which they destroyed every building except the Palestinian president's main offices.

In vacating the Muqata, Sharon bowed to U.S. pressure so as not to upset Washington's diplomatic efforts to secure support for any campaign against Iraq.

Israeli media said Monday some of the 50 Palestinians who Israel wanted to seize for alleged links to suicide bombings had sneaked out of the complex after the army pullout.

Some sharpshooters were on the roof of the eight-story Palestinian Culture Ministry, empty because of a curfew, and atop another eight-story building under construction.

Arabs bitterly denounced the U.S. legislation on Jerusalem, which they saw as fresh evidence of Washington's bias toward Israel.

``This is an act against peace, an act of incitement,'' Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian planning and international cooperation minister, told Reuters.

Qatar, current head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, condemned the law as a ``flagrant violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions on Jerusalem.''

Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, the capital of the future state they aspire to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its capital.

Britain, Washington's main ally in any future action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, also put the United States on notice that policy toward Israel must be even-handed.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, slammed by left-wingers in his Labor Party for threatening war in Iraq instead of trying to end Israeli-Palestinian violence, said U.N. resolutions must be implemented across the Middle East, not just in Baghdad.

``Yes, what is happening in the Middle East now is ugly and wrong -- the Palestinians living in increasingly abject conditions, humiliated and hopeless (and) Israeli civilians brutally murdered,'' he told Labor's annual conference.

Blair called on Israel and the Palestinians to resume full peace negotiations by the end of the year.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html