Roadmap implementation committee to meet next Thursday

RAMALLAH, March 6 (Xinhua) -- A three-way Israeli, U.S. and Palestinian committee will meet next Thursday to discuss implementing the first phase of roadmap peace plan, the top Palestinian negotiator said on Thursday.

Saeb Erekat told the Voice of Palestine radio station that the meeting will be headed by U.S. General William Fraser appointed by President George W. Bush to oversee the materialization of the U.S.-backed plan.

Under the first phase of the roadmap, Israel has to freeze building and expanding settlements in the West Bank and to withdraw from the territories occupied in the 1967 war.

The plan, in the meantime, calls on the Palestinians to crackdown on militants.

The Palestinians have held presidential and parliamentary elections as the plan calls and nearly stopped violence in the West Bank but not in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The roadmap plan has been the base for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks which resumed at a U.S.-hosted conference in November.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, however, suspended statehood talks with Israel on Sunday in protest against the Jewish state's large-scale offensive in the Gaza Strip.

The five-day incursion last week which combined aerial and ground offensive killed more than 125 Palestinians.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who visited the region on Tuesday, is sending her assistant David Welch to Cairoon Thursday to ask Egypt to mediate between Israel and Hamas to pave the way for the ceasefire.

But Erekat did not rule out the possibility that the negotiations will collapse if Israeli military operations continue.

JERUSALEM, March 6 (Xinhua) -- An Israeli soldier was died Thursday morning during a preliminary explosion near Kissufim, an Israeli town adjacent to the central Gaza Strip, an army source told Xinhua.

The spokesman of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that the victim died of injuries after the an explosive device was detonated near the patrolling vehicle, which caused another Israeli soldier seriously wounded and two were lightly wounded. Full story

RAMALLAH, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Wednesday that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) intends to resume peace talks with Israel.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman of the presidency quoted Abbas assaying in a written statement that "we intend to resume the peace talks with Israel which reserve the aim of ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital." Full story

JERUSALEM, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Security Cabinet decided Wednesday that Israel will continue to strike at the Hamas regimein the Gaza Strip while advancing the negotiations process with the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

The ministers also decided that it would coordinate with various elements, including Egypt, in order to weaken the Hamas government without creating a humanitarian crisis, said a statement released by the Government Press Office. Full story

GAZA, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Hamas on Wednesday denied reports that Egypt resumed mediation between the Islamic movement and Israel, upon a green light from the United States, to reach ceasefire in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

"We don't have information about these reports and what we have is the opposite," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told reporters in Gaza. Full story

CAIRO, March 4 (Xinhua) -- As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday started her latest Mideast regional tour with the aim to salvage the U.S.-sponsored peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Arab experts and media here didn't hold high expectations on her visit to achieve tangible results to push forward the stalled Mideast peace process.