Abbas asks Bush to press Israel into stopping settlement building

Efforts intensified to bring calm to Gaza, prisoner exchange deal revived

UNRWA stops operations in Gaza Strip after running out of fuel

Fresh scandal of Israeli espionage on U.S.

Hamas leaders handed over proposals for a truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip, with a timetable for extending it to the West Bank, at a meeting of the Palestinian Islamist group with Egyptian mediators. Former Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud el-Zahar and former Interior Minister Saeed Seyam held talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Egypt's main contact with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Israel, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said. A Palestinian official close to the talks said the Hamas delegation would tell Suleiman it is prepared to accept the idea of a staged truce, starting with Gaza only. "Hamas's position is that they agree to a calm in Gaza and the West Bank but it would begin in Gaza at this stage and then apply to the West Bank after an agreed and specified period of time," said the official, who declined to be named. Hamas, which controls Gaza but has prominent members resident in the West Bank, has previously insisted that a truce should begin and apply at the same time to both areas. Israel said it was ready for "quiet" at the Gaza border, but that it would require a complete halt to attacks by Hamas on Israelis, a stop to cross-border rocket fire from all Palestinian groups and an end to weapon smuggling into Gaza. "We can't have a period of quiet that will just be the quiet before the storm," said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The Palestinian official said Hamas made any truce conditional on Israel opening all of Gaza's border crossings and halting military action in the territory. The Islamist group had backing from other Palestinian militant factions in the enclave, he added. Egypt would relay Hamas's proposal to Israel in the coming days, he added. Israeli officials said they were skeptical about the chances of reaching a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. "We are not holding our breath," a senior Israeli official said. "We certainly don't want Hamas to have an interval to get stronger." Israel has said it is not negotiating a truce with Hamas but would have no reason to launch attacks on the Gaza Strip if rocket fire from the territory ceased. But it says it reserves the right to take military action to protect its citizens. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met U.S. President George W Bush, hoping the United States will press Israel to stop expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Abbas contends the curb on further expansion is needed to make progress in Middle East peace talks which are bogged down five months after both sides pledged to reach a deal by January. In a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Abbas said time was running out if that target, laid out at the Annapolis Conference in November, was to be met. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Abbas had told Rice more pressure must be exerted on Israel to stop the expansion of West Bank settlements. Abbas wants a framework peace agreement by January with timetables and specifics leading to the creation of a Palestinian state and not just a "declaration of principles" as suggested by some Israeli officials. The United Nations on Thursday stopped distributing food to Palestinian refugees in Gaza because its vehicles have run out of fuel following an Israeli blockade, a U.N. official said. The official, Adnan Abu Hasna, said 700,000 Palestinians who depend on the U.N. for basic food packets, won't be getting them. He said the U.N. Relief & Works Agency used the last of its fuel Thursday, and that forced it to stop distribution. Israel responded that the fuel is available, but the Islamic Hamas rulers of Gaza are preventing it from being distributed. Abu Hasna, the UNRWA spokesman, said that without fuel for its vehicles, the agency couldn't bring new shipments to its warehouses or distribute it to needy Palestinians.

As of Thursday evening, he said, "all of our regular food operations have stopped because of the fuel shortage."

Israel shipped fuel to Gaza to run its electricity power plant but maintains a ban on gasoline and diesel fuel. Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas overran the territory last summer.

Col. Nir Press of the Israeli military liaison unit with Gaza said that on Wednesday, Israel agreed with UNRWA over fuel shipments to keep its vehicles on the road, but Hamas stopped the delivery.

"We don't control the internal situation in Gaza between Hamas and UNWRA," he said. "I hope Hamas will allow UNWRA access to the fuel we have supplied" on Friday.

Press charged that Hamas is creating an artificial crisis. "It serves their propaganda purposes and creates a false pretense of a humanitarian crisis that doesn't exist," he told reporters in a group telephone interview.

There is some fuel stored in Gaza, but a local strike by distributors means it isn't reaching the public. Palestinian distributors have been refusing to pick up about a million liters that Israel pumped earlier this month into the Palestinian side of the border fuel depot, saying the quantity is insufficient.

On Wednesday, the UNRWA operation director John Ging acknowledged the "complicated fuel situation," but said Israel "must provide enough fuel for daily needs."

Ging said in a statement sent to reporters that UNRWA decided to stop all its relief operations offered to one million refugees in the Gaza Strip on Thursday due to fuel shortage.

He has warned that the tightened Israeli blockade, especially fuel restrictions, imposed on the Gaza Strip for the past ten months had led to real disaster to one and a half million Palestinians.

Ging said that the blockade, which culminated in blocking fuel supplies for about two weeks, was posing real danger to the lives of the strip's populace and causing an unmanageable humanitarian crisis.

He called for immediate reopening of fuel supplies to Gaza to enable its inhabitants to live in dignity, noting that they are protected by international laws and legitimacy.

After Islamic Hamas movement took control of the Gaza Strip in June last year, Israel imposed a tightened blockade on the enclave and closed all its border crossings, except for humanitarian needs of food, fuel and medicine.

Following a series of armed attacks carried out by Gaza militants on key border crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel, Israel barred fuel for cars into the strip for more than two weeks.

Meanwhile, a U.S. court decided to release on a bail of 300,000 dollars a Jewish American the Justice Department has accused of providing classified nuclear and military information for the Israeli entity.

Israel has said it has not spied on the US since 1985, responding to the arrest of a former US army engineer on charges of being an Israeli spy.

Ben-Ami Kadish, 84, is suspected of passing information on nuclear weapons and air defense to Israel while working as a mechanical engineer at an army base in New Jersey.

"The events go back to the early 1980s. Since 1985 there have been clear orders from prime ministers not to conduct these kinds of activities," Arieh Mekel, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, said on Wednesday.

Court papers say Kadish's spying took place between 1979 and 1985, although he is alleged to have maintained contact with an Israeli official until this year.

US authorities also accused Kadish, who was arrested on Tuesday, of illegally acting as an agent for Israel from 1979 to 2008 without notifying the US attorney-general's office.

Kadish was suspected of reporting to the same Israeli official as former Pentagon official Jonathan Jay Pollard, who plead guilty to spying for Israel in 1986 and is serving a life term.

Washington registered its concern over the affair with its main Middle East ally.

"We would expect that Israel would not be engaged in such activities," Tom Casey, a US state department spokesman said.

The office of Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, which is responsible for the Mossad intelligence service, declined to comment.

But Danny Yatom, a legislator and a former head of Mossad, said the current case had angered Washington.

"I think what primarily bothers the Americans is the feeling that Israel didn't tell them the whole truth two decades ago, in 1985, when the Pollard affair exploded," Yatom told Israeli Army radio.

"The Americans asked if there are additional people that Israel ran or are running in the United States.

"The answer, to the best of my knowledge, was always no," Yatom said.

The complaint alleges that the Israeli consular official, identified in the indictment as "CC-1", gave Kadish lists of classified documents to obtain from the US Army's Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Centre at the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.

The documents included information about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and the US Patriot missile air defense system.

Kadish, who worked at the arsenal from 1963-1990, kept in touch with CC-1 via telephone and email and met the official in Israel in 2004, the authorities said.

"CC-1" left the US in 1985 and has never returned, the authorities said.

SAUDI Arabia and Oman's lack of participation in the Istanbul Co-operation Initiative (ICI) will not prevent the success of the project, a senior diplomat told the GDN.

Bahrain's Ambassador to Belgium and the European Union Mohammed Abdul Ghaffar said the agreements which Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE had already signed with the Nato proved relations with the organization had not been damaged.

Saudi and Omani delegations attended the conference and Abdul Ghaffar believes it is only a matter of time before both countries officially sign up to the ICI.

"The co-operation between Bahrain and other GCC countries with Nato, which has a long experience in security issues, will be beneficial to all parties," said Abdul Ghaffar.

"Not all of the GCC countries have joined the ICI yet, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar have and we are hopeful the other two will.

"But in a way it has a collective parameter to it because we invited them (Saudi and Oman) to attend and they did." Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet, on Thursday signed a security agreement with NATO at a conference on cooperation between the Western alliance and Gulf Arab states.

The accord provides for the exchange of security information, senior Bahraini foreign ministry official Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Mubarak al-Khalifa told reporters. It was signed by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmad al-Khalifa at the one-day gathering of security officials.

"The agreement regulates the exchange of security information between Bahrain and NATO... Such information is important to both sides to resolve or avert security problems or even disasters," such as "a radioactive leak from a nuclear station in the region," Sheikh Abdulaziz said.

Bahrain and three other Gulf Arab states -- Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates -- have joined the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) since its launch at a NATO summit in Istanbul in 2004.

In his remarks to the meeting, De Hoop Scheffer urged Saudi Arabia and Oman to join their four Gulf Cooperation Council partners in joining the ICI.

The ICI focuses on practical security cooperation between states throughout the broader Middle East, with special emphasis on the energy-rich Gulf nations.

Through the accord, NATO offers practical cooperation in areas such as counter-terrorism, border security, participation in NATO exercises and countering weapons of mass destruction.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Thursday that the mentality of forming rival militias in Iraq was over, the premier's office said in a statement.

Maliki told Miliband, on a surprise visit to Baghdad, that "national reconciliation has been a success and all political parties will return to government.

"The ideology of having rival militias is over. The weapon is now in state hands," the statement said that Maliki told Miliband during their talks.

Many Iraqi political groups have their own private armies, and clashes between rival groups have caused massive bloodshed across the country.

Last month Maliki ordered a crackdown on Shiite militiamen, mostly from the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, in the southern city of Basra.

Hundreds of people were killed in the ensuing violence. "We have political support from all entities for the measures taken by the government," the statement quoted Maliki as telling Miliband on Thursday.

Basra, which until December was under British military control, became the setting for turf wars between rival Shiite political parties battling for control of the oil-rich province. "The situation in Basra is stable and we have solutions for other regions such as Mosul and Baghdad. The government is going after the outlaws," Maliki said. "The decision has been taken to confront challenges strongly."

Miliband affirmed Britain's support to Iraq: "We are focusing on cooperating with Iraq to develop projects in the south," he said, according to the statement which was issued in Arabic.

Miliband came to Baghdad in the midst of major military operations against Shiite militias.

In Sadr City, the Iraqi Army and American forces have been fighting to clear the area which has been the stronghold of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

"I'd heard before I came here that there was a new confidence in Iraq," the foreign secretary said. "And now I've seen it, so that must make one more optimistic but equally one should never be glib.

"This is a country still with major, major, major challenges. Economic and social, but above all security and political challenges, and in the end it has to be politics that comes to the fore but it's going to need a very strong military presence to carve out the space that's necessary."

Also in Iraq, Izzat Ibrahim al-Dori, who tops the Iraqi government's list of most-wanted fugitives, is in Syria from where he leads the insurgency in Iraq, an Iraqi official said in remarks published Wednesday.

"We have precise and definite information. Izzat al-Dori is in Syria, we know it. He funds several terrorist groups and leads a Baath group," national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie told the Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat.

"We spoke about this to the Syrians several times. They deny his presence (in Syria) despite the evidence we have," he said.

Dori, the most senior official in the ousted Saddam Hussein regime to be still on the run, heads a 41 most-wanted list released by the Iraqi government in 2006 with a $10-million bounty.

He was Saddam's number two under the former Baath regime and is considered an operational leader with close ties to anti-U.S. insurgents.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday will recommend the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, to lead Central Command, the military command responsible for Middle East operations.

Gates' recommendation must go to President George W. Bush, who will then send the nomination to the U.S. Senate. Petraeus, who has overseen a war strategy widely credited with a dramatic reduction in violence in Iraq, will replace former Adm. William Fallon, who resigned after a reported break with Bush over Iran policy.

Pentagon sources also said they expected Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, now No. 2 in Iraq, to replace Petraeus as top commander in that war. They said Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Gates' military advisor, would likely become the No. 2 commander in Iraq.

In the United States, a platoon sergeant accused of shooting an unarmed Iraqi and then ordering another U.S. soldier to "finish him" faces a court martial this week for premeditated murder.

Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales, of San Antonio, faces a minimum of life with parole if convicted.

The Iraqi man was shot multiple times in the head and chest near the town of Kirkuk when Corrales’ platoon raided a suspected insurgent hide out on June 23. The U.S. military hasn’t been able to identify the man by name.

Pvt. Christopher Shore, the soldier Corrales allegedly ordered to fire additional shots at the man, was found not guilty of third-degree murder in a February court-martial but convicted of aggravated assault. He was sentenced to 120 days in prison and a two-grade reduction in rank.

Shore, 26, admitted he shot at the man but said he intentionally missed. The Winder, Ga., native said he fired his weapon because he was afraid of outwardly disobeying Corrales, a soldier his defense team portrayed as abusive and prone to violence.

Shore is expected to testify at Corrales’ court-martial. Besides premeditated murder, the Army is charging Corrales, 35, with wrongfully soliciting another soldier to shoot an unarmed, wounded Iraq. A third charge alleges Corrales planted an AK-47 rifle next to the victim after he was shot.

Frank Spinner, Corrales’ lawyer, did not return a phone call seeking comment. A jury, called a "panel" in the military justice system, of at least five soldiers will determine Shore’s guilt or innocence. They would also sentence Corrales if they convict him.

Corrales is due to be arraigned on Monday, while the trial is expected to start Wednesday and last three or four days. The prosecution and the defense are expected to argue several motions before Wright on Monday, including one submitted by the government to prevent the introduction of evidence related to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Corrales and Shore deployed to Iraq for 15 months starting in mid-2006 with the 25th Infantry Division’s 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team based outside Honolulu.

The United States on Thursday accused North Korea of helping Syria to secretly build a nuclear reactor to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons and released top-secret photographic intelligence that U.S. officials called conclusive proof of the allegation.

The Bush administration unveiled the ground-level photographs and spy satellite pictures seven months after Israeli aircraft bombed the suspected reactor, which was in a remote canyon near the town of al Kibar in Syria's eastern Dayr az Zawr Province.

"We are convinced . . . that North Korea assisted Syria's covert nuclear activities," said a White House statement. "We have good reason to believe that reactor . . . was not intended for peaceful purposes."

President Bush authorized the extraordinary disclosure of intelligence in what a senior administration official called an effort to encourage North Korea to fully disclose its nuclear activities in international talks on ending its nuclear weapons program.

The official, who requested anonymity as a condition of a briefing given to journalists, said the administration also hoped that the presentation would persuade more countries to enforce international sanctions imposed on Iran for defying U.N. demands to suspend its uranium enrichment program, which can be used to produce weapons.

"The construction of this reactor was a dangerous and potentially destabilizing development for the region and the world," the White House said. "This underscores that the international community is right to be very concerned about the nuclear activities of Iran and the risks those activities pose to the stability of the Middle East."

The Bush administration remains committed to the so-called six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear program, the White House said. The talks include China , Russia , South Korea and Japan.

The senior administration official said that the Bush administration consulted Israel on options for dealing with the suspect reactor, including using diplomacy backed by the threat of force to persuade Syria to shut down the project.

"Israel concluded a Syrian nuclear capability to be an existential threat to the state of Israel. Israel made its own decision (to bomb the site) without any green light from us," the official said. "None was asked for. None was given." Since the Sept. 6 Israeli airstrike, Syria has repeatedly denied news reports that a nuclear facility built with North Korean assistance had been the target.

"This is fantasy," Syrian Ambassador to the United States Imad Moustapha told CNN after he received the briefing at the State Department . "This will be a major embarrassment to the U.S. administration for a second time: They lied about Iraqi WMDs (weapons of mass destruction), and they think they can do it again."

U.S. officials briefed the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog in Vienna, Austria, which Syria has refused permission to inspect the site.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials conceded Thursday in a briefing for journalists that followed presentations to select members of Congress that they lacked "clinical evidence" that Syria has an active nuclear weapons program.

One critical missing piece of proof is evidence of a reprocessing plant that Syria would need to extract plutonium from used uranium fuel rods, which would have powered the suspect reactor but were never loaded, they said.

They insisted, however, that the facility had no other purpose but to produce plutonium for warheads, saying that the intelligence showed that the suspect reactor was a copy of a 1950s British design that North Korea built at Pyongyang to supply plutonium for its small nuclear arsenal.

Moreover, senior U.S. intelligence officials said, there were no electrical transmission lines leading from the site near the Euphrates River, which ruled out the possibility that the facility was a power generating station. The design also was "ill-suited" for research, they added.

Construction of the facility began in summer 2001 and was completed in August, and it "was weeks and probably months" away from going on line, said one senior U.S. intelligence official. "We had to assume they could throw the switch at any time."

The presentation comprised photographs, satellite pictures and computerized images of what senior U.S. intelligence officials said was the exterior and interior of the suspected reactor, as well as a system for carrying cooling water from the river.

They refused to say how the United States acquired the highly detailed ground-level photographs last year, but said that windows, doors and other openings that the photos depicted matched those in pictures taken by U.S. spy satellites.

Shots of the purported Syrian facility set next to pictures of the Yongbyon reactor also appeared to show distinct similarities, including the same control rod configurations in the tops of the reactor vessels.

The presentation included a photograph of a senior North Korean scientist from Yongbyon standing with a senior Syrian nuclear official in front of a car bearing a Syrian license plate. The North Koreans were driven by "cash," said one senior intelligence official.

A document distributed as part of the presentation said that senior North Koreans from Yongbyon began visiting Syria before construction of the facility began and that Pyongyang is known to have procured nuclear-related equipment for Damascus in 2002.

"North Korean nuclear officials were located in the region of the reactor both early and late in 2007," the document said. "Our information shows that North Korean advisors also probably assisted with damage assessment efforts after the reactor was destroyed."

The senior intelligence officials said the United States became aware in 2001 that Syria and North Korea were cooperating on nuclear activities, but their cooperation on the al Kibar site wasn't confirmed until last year.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad confirmed in remarks published on Thursday that Turkey has relayed a message from Israel expressing a readiness to swap the Golan Heights for peace.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "informed me of Israel's readiness to withdraw from the Golan in return for peace with Syria," Assad was quoted by the Qatari daily Al-Watan as saying.

In excerpts from an interview to be published in full on Sunday, the paper quoted Assad as saying that Ankara has been mediating between Israel and Syria since April last year.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert assured Erdogan of his readiness to return the Golan, and this was relayed to Syria a week ago, Assad said, confirming reports of Turkish mediation that emerged on Wednesday.

"What we now need is to find common ground through the Turkish mediator," he said, adding that any negotiations with Israel would be conducted via Ankara.

Olmert's spokesman, while withholding direct comment on Assad's remarks, said Israel wanted peace talks with Syria. "We have no specific comment on President Assad's statements," Mark Regev told AFP in Jerusalem.

But "Israel wants peace and wants to engage in peace negotiations with Syria. We know what Syria would expect from such negotiations and Syria knows what we would expect."

Israeli Tourism Minister Yitzhak Herzog, a member of the inner security cabinet, said that Israel was in no hurry to give up the Golan, however.

"The Golan is precious to us all and no one is in a hurry to relinquish it... We're not there yet anyway... but the fact that both sides are talking peace is in itself positive," he told Israel Radio. Assad said the first thing that needs to be discussed is "recovery of the land in order to (ascertain) Israeli credibility, because we have to be cautious and precise in discussing this issue."

Assad said Israel was proposing direct talks, but that these need common ground and "a sponsor, which can only be the United States, unfortunately."

He said the administration of US President George W. Bush "has neither a vision, nor the will to (push forward) the peace process" but that direct negotiations might become possible under his successor.

Assad said he will discuss the issue with Erdogan when the Turkish prime minister visits Damascus on Saturday. Assad's remarks came a day after reports in Syria that Erdogan has assured Damascus that Israel is ready to return all of the Golan Heights in return for peace.

Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in 1981 in a move never recognized by the international community.