Ross fails to break deadlock over West Bank

Ross fails to break deadlock over West Bank

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Agencies): U.S. peace envoy Dennis Ross has failed to break the impasse over a second Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank scheduled to follow U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit, Palestinian officials said on Wednesday.

"The meetings held yesterday did not produce the necessary breakthrough between us and the Israeli side on the implementation of the second withdrawal due under the Wye River agreement," Palestinian negotiator Hassan Asfour told AFP.

Ross met on Tuesday with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and was expected to return home following a second rounds of meetings with both men on Wednesday.

Asfour said it was unlikely Ross could resolve the disputes standing in the way of further implementation of the Wye River land-for-security deal reached six weeks ago in Washington.

"I think it's unlikely in light of the Israeli intransigence and double-dealing that he will be able to bridge the gap in the coming days," said Asfour, minister without portfolio.

"I think the American president during his visit will strive to arrive at a solution to the serious crisis caused by the Israeli government, which wants to destroy the Wye River agreement," he said.

Under the Wye deal, Israel carried out a first withdrawal from two percent more of the West Bank land month and freed 250 Palestinian prisoners, mostly common criminals.

But last week Netanyahu said he would not order the second phase of the pullback scheduled for Dec. 18 unless the Palestinians halt a rash of violent protests over the past two weeks and meet other conditions.

Most controversially Netanyahu has demanded that Palestinians stop insisting Israel agreed at Wye to release prisoners "with Israeli blood on their hands" and that Arafat retracts threats to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in May.

Clinton is due to arrive early on Sunday and will pay the first visit by a U.S president to the Palestinian territories on Monday.

Clinton is also due to give a speech to a joint session of the Palestinian legislature and the Palestinian National Council in Gaza which is due to vote on amendments to the Palestinian national covenant.

In Hebron, West Bank, more than 55 Palestinians were hurt in unrest on Wednesday, when protests and a general strike marked the 11th anniversary of the Palestinian uprising, witnesses said.

The clashes, following violence on Monday in which 70 Palestinians were injured, cast a shadow over the Clinton's scheduled visit on Dec.12-15 to Israel and Palestinian-ruled areas.

Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli soldiers and cars on roads around West Bank towns and Jewish settlements in violence reminiscent of the intifada that began in 1987 and largely died out after the Oslo interim peace deal in 1993.

At least 27 protesters were wounded, five of them seriously, from rubber-coated bullets fired by Israeli soldiers during clashes in Bethlehem, witnesses said.

Another 10 were hurt in protests near Ramallah and some 19 Palestinians were injured elsewhere in the West Bank. The army said an Israeli woman motorist was slightly injured by a rock thrown by Palestinians.

Palestinian businesses and schools were closed to commemorate the uprising and to protest at Israel's refusal to release Palestinian security prisoners under the Wye River land-for- security deal brokered by Clinton.

The militant Moslem group Hamas said in a statement its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, under house arrest in Gaza, had begun a hunger strike to affirm the "sacred right" of the movement's detainees "to freedom and dignity".