Religious tolerance conference lives up to its name

A U.N. conference on religious tolerance broke new ground Wednesday when a half-dozen Arab leaders - including Saudi King Abdullah for the first time ever - stayed in their seats while an Israeli president spoke.

Perhaps the reason was that they liked what he said.

President Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace laureate and leading Israeli dove, embraced a 2002 Saudi peace initiative to recognize Israel in exchange for a withdrawal by the Jewish state to pre-1967 borders.

"I must say there is a profound change in their perception," Mr. Peres told reporters an hour after receiving what might be the loudest applause an Israeli leader has ever experienced inside the chambers of the U.N. General Assembly.

The two-day conference initiated by Saudi King Abdullah was meant to defuse tensions among religions and sects.

Besides the Saudi monarch, those who sat and listened to Mr. Peres included the king of Jordan, the prime ministers of Morocco and Qatar, the president of Lebanon and the emir of Kuwait.

Until Wednesday, Saudi policy was to publicly shun Israeli leaders.

King Abdullah skipped a U.S.-sponsored conference in Annapolis a year ago and sent his foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, instead.

Prince Saud then sat in the hall outside the main conference room at the U.S. Naval Academy when it was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's turn to speak.

At the United Nations Wednesday, King Abdullah opened the event:

"We state with a unified voice that religions through which Almighty God sought to bring happiness to mankind should not be turned into instruments to cause misery."

Mr. Peres spoke after King Abdullah.

"Your majesty, the king of Saudi Arabia, I was listening to your message. I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people. It's right, it's needed, it's promising," the Israeli president said.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad reminded the audience of his peoples' demands.

"Nothing that has been said from this rostrum or any other forum might change the historical fact that East Jerusalem is an occupied Palestinian territory since June 5, 1967," said Mr. Fayyad, demanding that Israel withdraw from that quadrant of the city and from occupied areas of the West Bank.

The two-day discussion was initially meant to be an interfaith dialogue.

However, General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto, a Nicaraguan priest, said the United Nations is a body of governments, not religions; therefore, the discussion would necessarily take a broader view.

Still, it was not quite a political discussion, either.

Leaders spoke in general terms about hope, mutual respect and the possibility for peace.

Heads of state and government from 80 nations are expected to speak by the end of the event Thursday afternoon, including President Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The conference opened just hours after Israeli soldiers killed four suspected militants in Gaza, saying the men were laying explosives along the border.

King Abdullah, curiously, did not refer to his 2002 peace proposal, focusing instead on the need for tolerance and the rejection of terrorism.

His appearance aroused criticism from human rights groups, which note that Saudi Arabia does not permit non-Muslims to practice their religions openly.

Jordanian King Abdullah II issued a lengthy appeal for peace and tolerance, switching from Arabic to English early in his speech so that more people in the hall could understand without interpretation.

He continued: "For with every day that justice is denied to Palestinians, with every day that the occupation prevents a positive future, the regional and global impact has grown. Resentment and frustration are felt throughout the region and, indeed, throughout the world. ... Extremists - Muslim, Christian and Jewish - are thriving on the doubts and divisions."

Betsy Pisik

---

‘Religions should not be used to cause misery’

---

King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia told the world community on Wednesday that justice and tolerance were the key Islamic values and stressed that religions should not be used as “instruments to cause misery”.

“Terrorism and criminality are the enemies of every religion and every civilisation,” King Abdullah said in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly meeting on interfaith peace and dialogue.

Describing terrorism as “absence of the principle of tolerance”, the king said: “Human beings were created as equals and partners, either they live together in peace and harmony, or they will inevitably be consumed by the flames of misunderstanding, malice and hatred.”

King Abdullah, the main proponent of the global interfaith dialogue, told the gathering of over 67 representatives from around the world that roots of all global crises could be found in human denial of eternal principle of justice.

The conference is being attended by 17 world leaders, including President Asif Ali Zardari, President George Bush, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines, King Juan Carlos of Spain, King Abdullah of Jordan, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa and Israeli President Shimon Perez.

The world leaders have highlighted the importance of promoting interfaith dialogue to strengthen world peace and stability.King Abdullah said that throughout history differences between followers of religions and cultures had engendered intolerance and caused devastating wars and bloodshed.

“It is high time for us to learn from the harsh lessons of the past and concur on the ethics and ideals in which we all believe.”

The Saudi leader said the alienation and the sense of being lost, mainly among the young, and the use of drugs was due to the dissolution of the family bonds that in fact needed to be strengthened.

Earlier in his opening remarks, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon observed that Islamophobia was a “new term for an old and terrible form of prejudice”.

“Living together in peace has proved tragically difficult. We must try harder to bring shared values to life,” he told the heads of state and government and other delegates in the blue-and-gold hall of the assembly.

Opening his speech with “Asalamu alaykum”, Mr Ban said: “Anti-Semitism remains a scourge. Islamophobia has emerged as a new term for an old and terrible form of prejudice.

“And other kinds of faith-based discrimination and racism show a dismaying persistence. Sometimes it seems as if none of history’s awful lessons has been learned.

“With knowledge and leadership, we can live up to the best of all our traditions, and ensure human dignity for all,” Mr Ban added.

“One of the greatest challenges of our time must now surely be to ensure that our rich cultural diversity makes us more secure -- not less.”

He said globalisation could be a great force for progress, but as economies merged, as cultural boundaries disappeared, as new media brought societies closer together than ever before, new fault lines could emerge.

As a result, he said, communal strife was intensifying. “Extremist ideologies are on the rise. Societies are more polarised.”Traditionally, the secretary-general said, peace involved balancing the interests of different states. “But we have learned that lasting peace required more than a competitive equilibrium. For peace to endure, individuals, groups and nations must come to respect and understand each other.

“Interfaith initiatives are addressing this need with ever greater frequency and force. One of the most respected of these initiatives was the World Conference on Dialogue, held in Madrid this past July at the invitation of King Abdullah.

“That landmark meeting brought together followers of the world’s religions, eminent scholars, intellectuals and others. The participants affirmed their belief in the fundamental equality of human beings, irrespective of their colour, ethnicity, race, religion or culture. And they pledged to act within their spheres of influence to foster dialogue and cooperation.”

He expressed optimism that the dialogue, conducted in a constructive manner, would bring in a glimmer of hope for the future of mankind, where justice and security would prevail over injustice, fear and poverty.

In this regard, he suggested constituting a committee of the participants of the Madrid dialogue so as to continue the dialogue in the days ahead.

The Saudi king assured leaders of the world that the desire for dialogue stemmed from the Islamic faith and values and the compassion to overcome miseries for the mankind.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Ambassador of Pakistan to the United Nations Abdullah Hussain Haroon sat in the UN General Assembly hall during King Abdullah’s speech.

President Asif Ali Zardari and President George W. Bush will address the forum on Thursday.
Masood Haider 

Israeli leaders are seriously considering a dormant Saudi plan offering a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for lands captured during the 1967 war, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday.

Barak said it may be time to pursue an overall peace deal for the region since individual negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians have made little progress.

Barak said he has discussed the Saudi plan with Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni, who is in the process of forming a new Israeli government, and that Israel is considering a response.

Saudi Arabia first proposed the peace initiative in 2002, offering pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from Arab lands captured in 1967 — the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

The 22-member Arab League endorsed the plan last year.

Israel has said the plan is a good basis for discussion, but expressed some reservations.

"There is definitely room to introduce a comprehensive Israeli plan to counter the Saudi plan that would be the basis for a discussion on overall regional peace," Barak told Israel's Army Radio.

He noted the "deep, joint interest" with moderate Arab leaders in containing Iran's nuclear ambitions and limiting the influence of the radical Islamic Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Analyst Ghassan Khatib, a former minister in the Palestinian Cabinet, said interest in the plan was "a little bit late" but welcome.

"I strongly believe that the Arab initiative is the best approach to peace between the Arabs and the Israelis," he said. "It fulfills all the legitimate objectives of Israel and those of the Palestinians and at the same time it has this regional dimension and it reflects one of the rare issues on which Arabs have consensus."

While Israel's outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has welcomed the Saudi plan, he and other leaders want to keep small parts of the territories captured in 1967. Israel also objects to language that appears to endorse a large-scale return of Palestinian refugees to lands inside Israel. Israel says a massive influx of Palestinians would destroy the country's Jewish character.

Yuval Steinitz, an Israeli lawmaker from the conservative opposition Likud Party and a member of parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that for Israel the Saudi plan is a nonstarter and called Barak's remarks "an empty political gesture."

"It doesn't recognize Israel's right to defensible borders...(and) demands Palestinian refugees settle in the Jewish state as well as the Palestinian state, which is totally unacceptable," he said.

Israel's ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, proposed putting Israel's various peace talks on one track last month at the United Nations, calling on Saudi King Abdullah to "further his initiative." He has since been pushing the idea in meetings with Israeli, Arab and Western officials, his office said.

While Peres has no formal role in Israeli foreign policy, he is a Nobel peace laureate and well respected in the international community.

In Sunday's interview, Barak said he was in full agreement with Peres.

"I had the impression that there is indeed an openness to explore any path, including this one," he said of his talks with Livni.

Barak, who leads the Labor Party, is expected to play a senior role in the next administration.

Livni's office refused to comment on her talks with Barak.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat noted that pursuing the Saudi peace initiative did not necessarily undermine the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians and he encouraged Israel to pursue this track.

"I think Israel should have done this since 2002. It is the most strategic initiative that came from the Arab world since 1948," he said. "I urge them to revisit this initiative and to go with it because it will shorten the way to peace."

ARON HELLER

---

Hamas could halt talks on Israeli soldier: official

Hamas could halt talks on the release of an Israeli soldier seized in a cross-border raid and now being held in the Gaza Strip if Egypt does not free one of its leaders, a Hamas official said.

Soldier Gilad Shalit was abducted by militants from an Israeli army base in June 2006.

In exchange for his release, Hamas has demanded that Israel sets free hundreds of prisoners it holds.

It also wants Egypt to release Ayman Nofal, a senior Hamas military operative arrested in Egypt on suspicion he was planning to attack targets there.

Egypt has been trying to mediate a prisoner swap.

But Hamas leader Youssef Farhat told a rally of hundreds of Nofal's fellow militants that Egypt could not play a mediation role as long as it held him.

"We have put the file of Shalit in the fridge and it will remain frozen unless Ayman Nofal is freed," Farhat said.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the comments reflected frustration within Hamas over the situation.

"Nofal's continued detention is annoying and it has topped the agenda of all talks with Egyptian officials. We hope Egypt can end it by freeing him," Abu Zuhri said.

Hamas won a parliamentary election two years ago, prompting Israel to impose an economic blockade on the Gaza Strip.

It blew up the Rafah border crossing in January, allowing hundreds of thousands of Gazans to pour into Egypt to stock up on supplies. Egypt resealed the border and has stepped up patrols to prevent another breach.

Nidal al-Mughrabi

President Bush and new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stood united Monday on issues like Iran and North Korea. But for all their handshakes and smiles, it is clear that thorny issues like missile defense are in a holding pattern until a new U.S. president takes office.

In their first sit down as heads of state, Bush called Medvedev a "smart" guy who is well versed in foreign policy. Medvedev casually referred to Bush as "George." Yet they inched no closer on the missile defense issue during their more than hour-long discussion on the sidelines of a summit here.

A Kremlin aide described the private meeting as open and constructive, but "at times critical."

The public comments by the two presidents only glossed over Russia's anger over missile defense. And they both brushed off the fact that their official relationship will expire in fewer than 200 days when the Bush presidency ends.

"We will build on the relationship with the new American administration," said Medvedev. "But we still have six months with the effective administration and we'll try to intensify our dialogue with this administration."

The Russian leader said he and Bush agreed on curtailing the nuclear weapon capability of Iran and North Korea.

"But then certainly there are others with respect to European affairs and missile defense where we have differences," Medvedev said. "We would like to agree on these matters, as well, and we also feel very comfortable in our dealings with George."

Like former Russian President Vladimir Putin, still the top powerbroker in Moscow, Medvedev remains critical of the West, in particular the United States. He has shown no sign of softening opposition to U.S. plans for missile defense facilities in Europe or to NATO's promise to eventually invite Georgia and Ukraine in.

Personal relations between the two appear warm, but Bush didn't go as far as to repeat what he said about Putin when he first met him in June 2001. Then, Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and "was able to get a sense of his soul."

"I'm not going to sit here and psychoanalyze the man, but I will tell you that he's very comfortable, he's confident, and that I believe that when he tells me something, he means it," Bush said.

The two, however, are at opposite ends of their political lives. Bush is on his way out and Medvedev just took office in May. This is Bush's eighth and final G-8. This is Medvedev's freshman year at the summit.

"I reminded him that yes I'm leaving, but not until six months, and I'm sprinting to the finish," Bush said. "So we can get a lot done together, and you know there are a lot of important issues like Iran. There's an area where Russia and the United States have worked closely in the past and will continue to work closely to convince the regime to give up its desire to enrich uranium."

The two leaders, who also are also are united in their fight against international terrorism and want to see a Middle East peace accord and a future for Afghanistan, talked on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations. Japan is hosting the event at a heavily guarded luxury resort atop Poromoi Mountain in Hokkaido, an island in northern Japan.

From there, visitors normally can see the doughnut-shaped Lake Toya, formed in a crater of a collapsed volcano. Not Monday. Sheets of rain pelted the scenic mountain and the weather offered a metaphor for the contentious U.S.-Russia discussions on missile defense: Fogged in.

U.S. and Polish officials are negotiating to base American missiles in Poland for a future missile shield against Iran. Still, there is no guarantee the shield will ever be built or would work as advertised. Negotiations over the 10 missile interceptors are proving more contentious than the U.S. had anticipated.

The site would be linked to a missile-tracking radar that Washington wants to place in the Czech Republic. The Czech government has agreed in principle to the plan, but parliament's approval is still needed.

Russia is staunchly against the U.S. plans, arguing that U.S. military installations in former Soviet satellites so close to its borders would pose a threat Russian security. Moscow has threatened to aim its own missiles at any eventual base in Poland or the Czech Republic.

The U.S. maintains that the plan poses no threat to the Kremlin's vast nuclear arsenal.

After the talks, a Kremlin aide accentuated the positive in U.S.-Russian relations, but said Bush and Medvedev made no progress on the missile-defense issue — the major point of disagreement between them.

Sergei Prikhodko said the talks were "exclusively well-intentioned, constructive, and open, but at times critical."

Prikhodko said Russia is not yet satisfied with transparency measures the United States has offered to take in order to ease Moscow's concerns the system would be aimed at weakening Russia's defenses.

Medvedev also expressed serious concern about media reports that the U.S. has discussed the possibility of deploying interceptors in Lithuania, if its first choice of basing them in Poland doesn't work out.

"This is absolutely unacceptable for the Russian Federation," Prikhodko said of the Lithuanian plan.

Bush and Medvedev met on the opening day of the summit, a day focused on aid to Africa and on whether the world's economic powers were providing enough financial assistance to fight disease and improve health care.

Bush, who also attended summit sessions with several African nations, is calling on G-8 nations to write checks to make good on their pledges to help battle HIV-AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

DEB RIECHMANN

The Israeli government agreed Sunday to free a Lebanese gunman convicted in one of the grisliest attacks in the country's history in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah guerrillas.

The German-mediated deal was a rare political victory for embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and closed a chapter from Israel's inconclusive war against the Lebanese militant group two years ago.

But critics warned that the deal's heavy price for Israel could offer militant groups an even greater incentive to kill captive soldiers. In Lebanon Sunday, Hezbollah declared victory and planned celebrations.

Israel's Cabinet voted 22-3 to OK the deal to return the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured by Hezbollah in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious monthlong war.

Before a six-hour Cabinet debate, Olmert announced for the first time that the soldiers were dead. He nevertheless pushed for the deal to be approved, citing the country's deep moral commitment to its dead and captive soldiers.

"Since we were children, we have been taught that we don't leave wounded in the field and we don't leave soldiers in captivity without doing all we can to free them," he said.

Israel will also receive the remaining body parts of its soldiers from the Lebanon war and a thorough Hezbollah report about Ron Arad, a missing Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.

The most difficult part for Israel was the release of Samir Kantar. He is serving multiple life sentences for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis — a 28-year-old man, his 4-year-old daughter and an Israeli police officer.

Witnesses said Kantar smashed the little girl's head against a rock and crushed her skull with a rifle butt. The attack has been etched in the Israeli psyche as one of the cruelest in the nation's history. Kantar denied killing the girl or smashing her skull.

Her mother, while trying to silence the cries of her other daughter as Kantar and three others rampaged through the apartment, accidentally smothered the 2-year-old.

On Sunday, the mother, Smadar Haran Kaiser, said she was devastated by the decision but understood it.

"The despicable murderer Kantar was never my own personal prisoner, but the state's prisoner," she told a news conference. "Even if my soul should be torn, and it is torn, my heart is whole."

Israel also agreed to release four other Lebanese prisoners, dozens of bodies and an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners.

Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On, who voted against the deal, told The Associated Press that he objected to the deal because "it included releasing Palestinian prisoners."

Dovish lawmaker Yossi Beilin told Channel 10 TV he would have backed the deal if the soldiers were still alive.

"There is tremendous difference in my view between saving someone's life and receiving coffins," he said. "I pray that we didn't give these people ideas that they can carry out more kidnappings and then ask for whatever they want."

Israel was also negotiating a trade with Palestinian Hamas militants for the release of an Israeli soldier captured in a June 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip.

Unlike his comrades in Lebanon, the soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, has sent letters and an audio tape to his parents and is believed to be alive, though he has not been seen since his capture and the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit him either.

In Beirut, Hezbollah said the Israeli approval of the deal reflected the guerrilla group's strength.

"What happened in the prisoners issue is a proof that the word of the resistance is the most faithful, strongest and supreme," the group's Al-Manar TV quoted Hezbollah's Executive Council chief Hashem Safieddine as saying.

In the southern city of Sidon, members of the Popular Democratic Party were decorating the central Martyrs Square with pictures of Kantar and hanging banners such as "Freedom to the hero, prisoner Samir Kantar" and "freedom comes with blood not tears."

Hezbollah had offered no sign that Goldwasser and Regev were alive, and the Red Cross was never allowed to see them. Ahead of the vote, Olmert said for the first time that Israel has concluded the two soldiers were killed during the raid or shortly after.

"We know what happened to them," Olmert told the Cabinet, according to comments released by his office. "As far as we know, the soldiers Regev and Goldwasser are not alive."

Goldwasser's wife, Karnit, praised Olmert for pushing for the trade, while still trying to come to terms with his declaration.

"My heart aches. It is very difficult for me. I am very tired, drained inside," she told reporters. "All I want to do is to digest things, try to understand what happened ... to rest a bit ... to have my pain."

Israeli officials said the deal could take place as early as next week. The trade will likely take place in Germany.

Ofer Regev, brother of kidnapped soldier Eldad Regev, said he hadn't given up hope yet.

"Until we see otherwise, we will continue hoping for a miracle to happen to us," he said.

ARON HELLER

Somalia's government signed an agreement Monday with an opposition alliance calling for an end to violence and the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops, whose presence has stoked an increasingly bloody Islamic insurgency.

The deal is an important step toward peace, but it remains to be seen if it will be respected by hard-line members of the opposition who have denounced those who took part in the U.N.-led talks in Djibouti.

Al-Shabab, the military wing of Somalia's ousted Islamic movement, did not participate in the Djibouti talks. The State Department considers al-Shabab, or "The Youth," a terrorist organization.

The Somali government's deal with the opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia came after hours of rumors that the talks had collapsed over the issue of Ethiopian troops, who have been in Somalia since 2006 help government forces deal with Islamic fighters. The opposition sees the Ethiopians as an occupying force.

Under the accord reached late Monday, both sides agreed to "end all acts of armed confrontation" within 30 days and to act within 120 days to remove Ethiopian troops once a U.N. peacekeeping force is deployed.

"The deal is a splendid step toward peace," said Somali Information Minister Ahmed Abdisalam, head of the government negotiating team. "The Somalis and the international community should now work toward turning it into a reality."

Calls to the opposition alliance were not immediately returned.

The U.N. Security Council has said it would consider deploying U.N. peacekeepers to replace African Union troops, if there is improved political reconciliation and security.

The AU force is struggling. It is authorized to have 8,000 soldiers but currently has 2,600 from Uganda and Burundi.

Members of the Security Council visited Djibouti last week to encourage Somalia's government and the opposition alliance to hold direct peace talks.

The opposition ruled out face-to-face talks unless the government set a timetable for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops, while Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf said Ethiopian forces would not leave until fighting stops and a U.N. peacekeeping force is deployed. The turning point in talks Monday was not immediately clear.

Somalia's shaky transitional government was formed in 2004 with the help of the United Nations, but has failed to assert any real control over the chaotic country. After Islamic militants seized control of the capital, Mogadishu, and most of southern Somalia, the government called in troops from neighboring Ethiopia in December 2006 to oust them.

The insurgency that started soon after remains a potent and disruptive force, and a continuing threat to Yusuf's government, which is backed by both the United States and European Union.

The country also is facing a worsening humanitarian crisis aggravated by high global food prices and drought.

ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have agreed to start drafting elements of a proposed peace accord, the chief Palestinian negotiator said Friday.

Ahmed Qureia, the veteran negotiator heading the Palestinian team, made it clear the decision did not necessarily reflect agreement on major issues. But this would be the first time since negotiations resumed more than six months ago that anything would be committed to paper.

"We agreed with the Israelis to begin writing the positions," Qureia told reporters late Friday.

Israeli government officials would not comment and Qureia did not explain why the two sides had agreed at this point to begin drafting a text.

However, the timing coincides with a corruption scandal in Israel that threatens to unseat Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Should Israel find itself going to early elections, polls show Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposes major territorial concessions to the Palestinians, becoming Israel's next premier. However, drafting during previous rounds of peace talks has not always meant that those positions were then preserved for future negotiators.

Qureia did not say what issue the two sides would start with. If they reach agreement on any issue, then they will draft a single provision, he said. If not, they will lay out on paper their divergent views, he added.

Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks in late November under U.S. prodding. Continued Israeli settlement construction and Israeli security concerns have clouded negotiations, and both sides have expressed doubt about achieving the declared goal of clinching a final accord by the end of the year.

Qureia confirmed that Israeli peace negotiators have offered the Palestinians land in exchange for territory where major West Bank settlements lie, but he termed their offer "unacceptable."

Palestinians would like to incorporate all of the West Bank into a future state, but their moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas, has acknowledged that Israel, with U.S. backing, likely will hold on to blocs where tens of thousands of settlers live. In exchange, Abbas is prepared to relinquish some West Bank land for an equal amount of Israeli land.

Qureia would not say how much territory Israel offered, where it is located or how much West Bank land the Jewish state proposed to keep under a final peace accord with the Palestinians.

"The Israelis presented a land swap offer, but this offer is unacceptable to us," he said.

Other Palestinian officials have said Israel has presented maps giving it 10 percent of the West Bank in exchange for southern Israeli territory near the Gaza Strip.

Early Friday, one Palestinian militant was killed and two were injured in a gunbattle that erupted after Israeli tanks and bulldozers crossed into central Gaza. The military said its forces entered to prevent rocket launches.

Fifteen Palestinians — some Hamas militants, others civilians — were wounded in a second aerial attack on a Hamas base in northern Gaza later Friday, doctors said. The missiles destroyed a building, witnesses said.

Hamas also fired four rockets toward Israel, the group said. One landed in the rocket-scarred town of Sderot, damaging six cars, the military said.

The latest flare-up in violence began Thursday when a Hamas mortar killed an Israeli and injured four others in southern Israel. Israel then sent aircraft after a rocket squad, the military said, but apparently missed their target, killing a 6-year-old Palestinian girl.

Olmert warned that Israel was close to abandoning efforts to bring a truce to the volatile area and was seriously considering a large-scale incursion.

"According to the information we have now, the pendulum is much closer to a decision on a harsh operation," Olmert said soon after returning from a brief visit to the U.S.

Egypt has been trying for months to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers.

But both sides have set tough conditions for a truce and Israeli leaders are under pressure at home to respond militarily because the weapons in the hands of Gaza militants have become more deadly.

LAURIE COPANS

The Pakistani government is close to an agreement to end hostilities with the most militant tribes in its turbulent border area, whose main leader is accused of orchestrating most of the suicide bombings of recent months and the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

A 15-point draft of the accord, which was shown to The New York Times, called for an end to militant activity and an exchange of prisoners in return for the gradual withdrawal of the Pakistani military from part of the tribal region of South Waziristan.

Even as the accord, a far-reaching draft that essentially forbids the tribes from engaging in nearly all illegal actions, was being negotiated by the government through tribal elders, the militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, ordered his fighters to cease their activities in the tribal regions as well as the adjoining North-West Frontier Province, warning of strict punishment of any violators.

American and Afghan officials were immediately skeptical of a deal with Mehsud, one of Pakistan's most hard-line militants. They have blamed past accords for allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to regroup, fortify their ties and use Pakistan as a base to plot attacks here and abroad. Previously, members of Pakistan's new coalition government had said they considered Mehsud irretrievably hostile.

"We have seen the agreements they have made before, and they do not work," said one American official, referring to an agreement in North Waziristan in September 2006, which was blamed for strengthening the militants and a surge in cross-border attacks against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

In Washington, the White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, was also wary. "We are concerned about it," she said, referring to the possibility of an accord, "and what we encourage them to do is to continue to fight against the terrorists and to not disrupt any security or military operations that are ongoing in order to help prevent a safe haven for terrorists there."

The approach to Mehsud followed pledges by the new government to make a break with the policies President Pervez Musharraf has embraced in recent years, to pursue dialogue with the militants and to restore calm to Pakistan, which has been jolted by suicide attacks. Diplomats and Afghan officials suggested that the government was trying to show good will, while playing for time to bring stability.

Though Musharraf, too, negotiated with the militants, he used the military in the tribal areas in a way that many Pakistanis criticized as heavy-handed, losing hundreds of Pakistani troops in the fighting. The military operations and his alliance with the United States in fighting terrorism have grown deeply unpopular.

The United States has consistently discouraged negotiations with militants — what Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte described as "irreconcilable elements" during a visit to Pakistan in March. "I don't see how you can talk with those kinds of people," he said.

Mehsud, perhaps Pakistan's most notorious militant, leads an umbrella group of the militants in the border areas, known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or the Taliban Movement of Pakistan. Pakistan's previous government and American officials have said a communications intercept linked him to Bhutto's assassination, and a Pakistani court has charged Mehsud in absentia with planning it.

Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and other members of her party have cast doubt on the previous government's version of events, however.

Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for the party, called the cease-fire announcement by Mehsud a "welcome development," but said the negotiations were continuing. "No deal has been finalized," he said by telephone. Regarding Mehsud's alleged involvement in Bhutto's assassination, he said the "Pakistan Peoples Party had not named Baitullah Mehsud" as being responsible for her attack.

Even so, Mehsud claims to have scores of suicide bombers at his disposal, and he is blamed for many if not most of the suicide attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the last two years. Diplomats and Afghan officials said they believed that the new government recognized that he was a long-term danger, even though it may be seeking a short-term reprieve from his attacks through the negotiations.

Previously, leaders of the Awami National Party, which leads the government in North-West Frontier Province and is part of the national coalition, have said they do not think Mehsud will enter into serious negotiations.

In Washington, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said the United States viewed the negotiations as a tactic, acknowledging that it had been tried before by Musharraf. The concern was follow-through and enforcement, he said. "The outcome is what matters," he said. "There has to be less violent activity. There has to be an end to the Al Qaeda elements who are very dangerous, who are up there plotting and planning."

The draft agreement, which was approved by senior political leaders in Islamabad, has the backing of the military establishment, officials here said.

They said the go-ahead for the talks was given at an April 15 meeting in Islamabad of top leaders of the new coalition government, which includes Bhutto's party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, now run by Zardari.

The Awami National Party chief, Asfandyar Wali Khan, briefed his own coalition partners and obtained their consent, too, the officials said.

One official said that during an earlier briefing, on April 2, the chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, told Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and the heads of the coalition parties that the military would take its cue from the political leadership on internal security, including peace talks with militants.

Members of the government could not be reached for comment. Zahid Khan, a government official from the Awami National Party in Peshawar, confirmed that negotiations were going on with the Mehsud tribe, not with Mehsud directly, but said that the central government was in charge of dealing with the tribal areas.

According to the draft document, the deal would be signed between the political administrator of South Waziristan and the tribal elders of the Mehsud tribes there.

It would require the Mehsud tribes to cease attacks and stop kidnapping military and government officials, to open all roads and to allow freedom of movement to the Frontier Corps, the local security force. They would also promise not to carry out terrorist acts in Pakistan, including the tribal regions, and not to assist others in attacks, or allow their territory to be used for antistate activity.

The draft requires the Mehsuds to respect state authority and resolve any problems through the local political administration, which would respect local customs and cooperate with tribal elders. It also requires the Mehsuds to assist the government in development plans for the region.

It also requires the Mehsud tribes to expel all foreign militants from their territory and deny them shelter in the future. The document says that the expulsion of foreign militants would begin within one month of the signing of the agreement, but a month's extension could be granted for good reason.

There is no mention of ending cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.

In return, both sides would exchange prisoners and the government would withdraw regular army troops from Mehsud territory in a gradual, phased manner, the document says. The draft also states that the agreement should not be scrapped because of any external or internal pressure, a reference presumably to American or other pressure.

One official expressed caution over the document and said the agreement was still not complete. "It involves tough bargaining," the official said. "By no means is it simple and easy."

Even as negotiations continued, Mehsud had fliers distributed in South Waziristan and adjoining districts ordering his fighters to cease activities and warning of public punishment for violators, his spokesman said.

Maulavi Omar, the spokesman, said in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location that the military had already begun pulling out of the Mehsud part of South Waziristan as a result of the ongoing talks.

A military spokesman denied it, however. "Not yet," Major General Athar Abbas said. "So far we have not received any orders from the government in this regard."

Maulavi Omar claimed that the Tehrik-i-Taliban held more than 100 military, paramilitary and government officials hostage and said they would be released after the agreement was signed through a grand tribal jirga, or gathering.

He said talks were also under way to restore peace both in North-West Frontier Province, where the government signed a separate accord with militant leaders from Malakand, an area north of Peshawar that includes the tourist valley of Swat. Heavy fighting has taken place there over the last six months.

A grand tribal jirga would be held to approve the agreement, which would be binding on all sides, Maulavi Omar said. "There will be full compliance from our side," he said, adding that he was more optimistic than ever for peace.

Ismail Khan and Carlotta Gall

---

• Fighting Taliban with better governance, not just arms
• U.S. discloses North Korea links to reactor in Syria
• South Korea to use cloned dogs to sniff for drugs and explosives
• The need for unanimity in China exacts a hidden price
• India's kinder, gentler debt collectors remind Americans to pay their bills
• Remains of Padre Pio, beloved mystic Italian monk, go on display
• A passion for Persia, Disneyland and dolphins
• A hard plastic is raising hard questions
• A Serbian heroine steps into politics
• U.S. Jews get a new voice in Washington
• As the price of rice rises, some traditions die
• Hookah bars in Paris fight smoking ban
• McCain faults Bush response to Hurricane Katrina
• A Serbian heroine steps into politics
• Bush administration releases images of Syrian reactor
• Poland calls for stronger EU military

Former President Carter said Monday that the Islamic group Hamas was willing to accept the Jewish state as a "neighbor next door," but the militants did not match their upbeat words with concrete steps to halt violence.

Hamas, which advocates Israel's destruction, instead recycled previous offers, including a 10-year truce if Israel takes the unlikely step of withdrawing from the West Bank and Jerusalem first.

Hamas has repeatedly confounded observers with its conflicting messages. Actions on the ground — seven rockets were fired on Israel from Hamas-ruled Gaza Monday, including one that wounded a 4-year-old boy — contradicted the Islamic militant group's positive words about coexistence and a truce.

And a leader of the Hamas military wing, which carried out a twin suicide bombing on the Gaza border Saturday, said his group would step up attacks against Israel in coming days.

The salvo of rockets came despite a last-minute phone call from Carter, urging a one-month halt to attacks on Israel, to gain some international goodwill and defuse tensions.

"I did the best I could," Carter said of his conversation with Hamas supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, pressing him to declare a one-month truce. "They turned me down, and I think they're wrong."

Carter, who delivered a speech in Jerusalem Monday summing up his visit, said top Hamas leaders told him during seven hours of talks in Damascus over the weekend that they are willing to live next to Israel.

Hours later, however, Mashaal sent mixed messages. He stressed that while the militants would accept a state in the 1967 borders, meaning alongside Israel, the group would never outright recognize the Jewish state.

The Bush administration and Israel, which shun Hamas as a terrorist group, have criticized the Carter mission as misguided. In Washington, a State Department official said Monday that it does not appear Hamas has changed its positions.

In Jerusalem, Carter defended his trip, saying peace in the region will be possible only if Israel and the U.S. start talking to Hamas and Syria, which supports several militant groups. He also called on the Bush administration to push harder to renew Israeli-Syrian peace talks.

"The present strategy of excluding Hamas and excluding Syria is just not working," said Carter, who brokered a historic 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

Analysts said Hamas apparently decided to send Carter off largely empty-handed, despite the possibility he might have paved an opening to a hostile West, because it prefers doing business with leaders in the region who can deliver concrete achievements. Egypt has been shuttling between Israel and Hamas for nearly two years trying to broker a cease-fire, a prisoner swap and an opening of Gaza's border crossings.

Over the weekend, Carter met twice with Hamas' five-member politburo, headed by Mashaal. Carter said he won a written pledge from Hamas to accept any peace deal with Israel, even if Hamas disagrees with some of the terms, as long as it's approved in a Palestinian referendum.

Carter said Hamas leaders told him they're also ready to accept the Jewish state's right to "live as a neighbor next door in peace" one day. Since its founding 21 years ago, Hamas has carried out scores of suicide attacks in Israel and has fired hundreds of rockets from Gaza at Israeli border towns.

The pledge did not reflect a new Hamas position, though it's significant that it was made in writing. Hamas leaders have said in the past they would establish "peace in stages" if Israel were to withdraw to the borders it held before the 1967 Mideast War. Hamas has been evasive about how it sees the final borders of a Palestinian state, and has not abandoned its official call for Israel's destruction.

The Hamas promise does not say who would participate in a peace referendum. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would be far more likely to approve a deal than exiles in camps in Lebanon and Syria, especially if a treaty does not affirm the "right of return" of refugees to homes in what is now Israel.

A vast majority of Israelis see the repatriation of millions of Palestinians as a threat to the Jewish state's survival, because Jews eventually could be outnumbered.

Mashaal praised Carter for ignoring the broad international boycott of Hamas, which is viewed by Israel and the West as a terrorist organization. "That doesn't mean we agree on all things," the Hamas leader said of Carter. "But we appreciate this brave voice, coming from the West, and coming from America."

Despite the warm words, Hamas rejected Carter's appeal to halt rocket fire on Israel for a month and to speed up the release of a captured Israeli soldier, as a show of good faith.

Mashaal wouldn't budge on the rockets, even during the last-minute phone call by Carter Monday morning.

Carter said that in that call, Mashaal insisted on a reciprocal cease-fire.

"I told them (Hamas), 'Don't wait for reciprocation, just do it unilaterally," Carter said. "'This would bring a lot of credit to you around the world, doing a humane thing.'"

Seven rockets hit Israel on Monday, but other militant groups claimed responsibility not Hamas. In one strike, a 4-year-old boy was hurt in the shoulder in the town of Sderot on Gaza's border.

Also, a leader of the Hamas military wing said attacks on Israel would intensify.

The leader, identified as Abu Jandal, told the Hamas-linked newspaper Al Risala that a suicide bombing at an Israeli position on the Gaza border on Saturday was just a warmup. In the attack, Hamas militants blew up two jeeps carrying hundreds of kilograms (pounds) of explosives, wounding 13 soldiers.

"The previous attacks were just a walk in the park," he told the newspaper.

Concerning a prisoner swap, Carter said the current indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, via Egypt, were making only very slow progress. He said Israel is willing, in principle, to free 1,000 prisoners for Cpl. Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas-allied militants in 2006. However, so far Israel has only approved 71 names from a list of 450 prisoners suggested by Hamas.

At this pace, Carter said, the negotiations could drag on for years.

He proposed that Hamas agree to a release of women, minors and Hamas legislators in the first phase, in order to speed up the swap, but was turned down.

Mouin Rabbani, an independent analyst, said Hamas used Carter to convey the message that, under certain conditions, it is willing to accept a two-state solution. "Where he demanded specific actions, they didn't respond because he wasn't in a position to deliver anything in return," Rabbani said.

In Washington, the State Department said there is no indication that Hamas wants peace with Israel. "It is pretty clear to us that there is no acceptance on the part of Hamas of any kind of negotiated settlement," said deputy spokesman Tom Casey.

Casey said there had been contradictory statements from Hamas officials over whether they would accept the result of a referendum on a peace deal. Earlier Monday, a senior Hamas official in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said Hamas would not necessarily accept the outcome of a referendum.

Casey also refuted Carter's insistence that no one in the State Department had advised him against meeting with Hamas officials, saying that Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch had specifically done so in a telephone conversation in late March.

Still, the State Department is open to hearing from Carter about the talks, Casey said.

Carter said he would write a report on his trip and send it to the Bush administration.

KARIN LAUB

Russia closed down a plutonium producing reactor Sunday, a Russian news agency reported, marking a milestone in U.S. nuclear nonproliferation efforts.

The United States and Russia have been working for years on arrangements to close Russia's three remaining weapons-grade plutonium producing reactors.

ITAR-TASS cited a Siberian Chemicals Plant official, Alleges Suglobov, with announcing the closure of the plant in the Siberian town of Seversk. Plant and Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency officials could not be reached for comment.

Nuclear reactors in Russia have been plagued by a history of glitches that have raised safety concerns. Just weeks before its closure, the reactor was temporarily deactivated due to a power failure. No leaks were detected, however.

A second reactor, also in Seversk, is expected to be shut down in June while a third reactor, in the central Siberian town of Zheleznogorsk, is expected to be shuttered at the end of 2009.

Closing the reactors has been a major U.S. nonproliferation goal. But the plants provide electricity and heat to the nearby towns, and the Russians had been reluctant to shut them down before two new fossil fuel plants are built.

An agreement was reached in March 2003 between the U.S. and Russia in which Washington committed $926 million to help build the fossil fuel plants. One in Seversk is almost completed.

Seversk, formerly known as Tomsk-7, is among 10 cities once at the heart of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons production complex. The reactors were built in secret in the 1960s in the arms race with the U.S.

The design of the Seversk reactor that closed Sunday was similar to the Chernobyl reactor involved in the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine, lacking concrete containment domes to hold in radiation in case of an accident or major leak.

The U.S. has already closed all 14 of its plutonium reactors.

PETER LEONARD

'It Will Take Some Time' to Know If Unprecedented Act Makes a Difference

There were tears in the chapel.

The 256th direct bureaucratic successor of Peter, the first pope, the fisherman from the lake in Galilee and friend of Jesus, was listening.

Five middle-age Catholic men and women were telling him the stories of how, as children, they had been sexually abused by priests -– the men they had looked up to for safety and comfort, for absolution for their souls and for access to God, their creator.

Now, the top boss -- the absolute monarch of the Catholic Church who is in charge of all priests and bishops -- was listening to their stories, apologizing, telling them of the deep pain it caused him personally and saying he would do everything possible to make sure it never happened again.

There were no cameras or recorders, and only a few other clergy present.

For Catholics, the pope is also literally the official representative on Earth of Christ himself, "The vicar of Christ," the son of God.

So his attention to their personal stories of abuse was not without weight -- and some of the victims were moved to tears.

It was also unprecedented.

No pope had ever met formally and officially with victims of sex abuse by priests, though it had been requested countless times.

"It was the first act of an official reconciliation between victims and the Catholic Church," the Rev. Keith Pecklers, an American professor of theology in the Vatican, told ABC News.

"This is just the beginning," Pecklers said. "It's going to take years and years and years to get on with this. But it can begin here."

Priests we talked to seemed greatly relieved that, at last, what felt to them like an authentic beginning of full acknowledgement for the American church's greatest tragedy had at least begun the process of healing.

"It was a terrible wound on the body of the church," the Rev. Thomas Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University told ABC. "Now that wound has been stitched up, the blood is no longer flowing, but it hasn't healed and it's also very painful."

"It's going to take time for the pain to go away," he said. "It's going to take time for that wound to heal."

Reese, who expressed delight upon first learning of the historic meeting when ABC News informed him of it by phone, has met with a number of victims of sex abuse by priests.

"What I've heard from so many victims," he said, "is that what they really wanted to do is go to someone in leadership in the church, a bishop or someone, and tell their story and share that pain and have it acknowledged. To be apologized to because sometimes what they got was stonewalling."

"The pope," Reese said, "is clearly not stonewalling these victims."

The vicar of Christ may at last have begun to do convincingly what so many of his bishops could not.

"With Cardinal [Bernard] Law, we never got any sense of him being contrite," said Pecklers, referring to the former archbishop of Boston, where the scandal broke open in 2002. Law was ultimately accused of covering up for many abusive priests, moving them from parish to parish.

"He finally apologized, but it was well after the fact, and it was never quite clear that Cardinal Law ever got it. It was a missed opportunity, really," said Pecklers.

Reese gives Pope Benedict high marks for leadership in this: "I think what he has done is what people wanted the pope to do: He realized it's what he needed to do and should do as a pastor."

Pecklers sees an unexpected new side of Benedict emerging from this meeting.

"A side which most people would not have expected to come from Joseph Ratzinger, who was known as 'the professor pope,'" said Pecklers. "It demonstrates a shepherd's heart, a pastoral side to this man, taking his role as a universal pastor seriously."

The unique papal meeting has church historians scrambling to find anything comparable.

It was, in a sense, a sort of new kind of confessional, the "sacrament of reconciliation," in which --- after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council -– penitents are meant to aim to reconcile themselves not only with God but also with humanity.

And this time the pope himself is the penitent as well as the empathetic listener.

Dramatic as this historic meeting was, it will take some time to assess its true meaning and impact.

But one psychologist was cautiously impressed.

I would think it could go a long way to helping heal the trauma," said Daniel Hill, a psychologist and psychoanalyst in New York City who for 30 years has dealt with trauma victims.

Pointing out the well-established psychic damage that can result from abuse by those to whom children normally go for protection and comfort, Hill sees a possible parallel.

"At the center of the trauma is a person [the priest] who presides in a place of safety and well-being, but who instead becomes a source of shame and fear," Hill said. "It is an insoluble problem, and a huge break of trust."

"So if someone higher up who's really in charge of [those priests] listens and is apologetic and says he feels ashamed, I would think it could go a long way to alleviate the trauma that resulted from the original breach of trust," said Hill, adding a caveat.

"This is, however, speculative," Hill said. "The meeting just happened. It will take some time before we can see whether it really helps. I hope it does."

BILL BLAKEMORE