Palestinian-Israeli Truce Meeting to Convene Friday

Senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials are to meet Friday under US mediation to assess the implementation of a US-brokered ceasefire over the past 48 hours and set work procedures for maintaining it in the next few days.

The United States will be represented by Central Intelligence Agency officials while head of the Israeli General Security Service Avi Ditchter is to attend the meeting.

Israel will continue to ease its closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip in line with with the ceasefire agreement drawn up by CIA director George Tenet.

Additional roads will be opened to Palestinian traffic and the encirclements around some towns will be removed, despite the killing of a senior Israeli army intelligence officer and the continuation of mortar and shooting attacks on Thursday, Israel Radio reported.

The radio also said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the army to avoid firing tank shells.

Sharon said on Thursday that the Israeli closure would not be lifted in areas where the ceasefire was being violated such as the West Bank town of Ramallah, and Rafah in the southern end of Gaza.

He added that the countdown of a cooling-off period preceding confidence-building measures would begin only when the violence in the territories had stopped completely.

In a shooting attack late Thursday night near the Jewish settlement of Neve Tsuf, close to Ramallah, three Israelis were injured, two of them in moderate to serious condition. There are no reports of casualties on the Palestinian side.

After the attack, Israeli settlers there threw stones at Palestinians near Ramallah and reportedly set fire to Palestinian fields in the area.

The Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire formally went into effect at 3:00 p.m (1200 GMT) Wednesday afternoon. Within the next 48 hours, Israel must lift its closure on Palestinian towns and villages and start to redeploy forces while the Palestinians should act to collect illegal weapons and thwart attacks against Israelis.






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