Israel assured the Palestinians that it will carry out two more partial troop pull-backs in the West Bank regardless of whether a framework for a final peace treaty is reached by next month's deadline, a Palestinian negotiator said on January 12.

The next withdrawal, from 6.1 per cent of the West Bank, is planned for January 20. The Palestinians have asked Israel to hand over West Bank suburbs bordering on East Jerusalem, the sector they seek as a future capital.

The dimensions of an additional pull-back are still under discussion. Israel has said it would offer a small area, perhaps 1 per cent of the West Bank, while the Palestinians have said previous agreements require Israel to hand over most of the West Bank, with the exception of military sites and Jewish settlements.

The two sides are to agree on the framework for a final peace treaty by February 13 and on the accord itself by September. Negotiators have made little progress during the framework talks.

On Tuesday, Israel and Palestinian negotiators discussed the lands to be handed over next week. Israel has said it will listen to Palestinian requests, but that Israel alone has the right to sketch out the withdrawal map.

Palestinians want to win control of the last heavily populated areas still not in their hands. Those areas are suburbs of Jerusalem, and Israelis worry that returning such areas now would allow the Palestinians a stake in the disputed city as the parties go into final talks.

The two sides had deadlocked over the previous 5 per cent withdrawal for the same reason. The withdrawal went ahead last week, seven weeks late, after they agreed that the question of the Jerusalem suburbs would be taken into account during the January 20 withdrawal.

In another development of the Mideast peace progress, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said yesterday that the framework for a peace treaty with Syria is attainable in two months.

It is not "presumptuous to think that we can have a framework agreement within two months," Barak said on army radio, "maybe two weeks more or less."

Barak returned on Tuesday from eight days of US-sponsored talks with Syria in Shepherds town, West Virginia.

Barak is facing growing opposition to the likely price for peace with Syria in return of the strategic Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war. The plateau overlooks Israel's north and controls much of its fresh water sources.

Barak said that although he made no promises about new borders, past commitments made by the Israeli governments since the start of Middle East peace talks in 1991 in Madrid cannot be ignored.

Syria claims that previous Israeli government pledged to return all of the Golan Heights for peace.