Palestinian president Yasser Arafat rejected today scathing comments by US national security adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice that his Palestinian Authority is corrupt, supports terror and is no model for a future state.
The Palestinian leader also condemned as "an act of racism" Israel's building of a security fence along its porous West Bank border which it said is aimed at keeping out Palestinian suicide bombers.
"We are implementing only what our people want us to do and we do not take orders from anyone," Mr Arafat told reporters in response to an interview Rice gave to the San Jose Mercury News. She told the US newspaper "the Palestinian Authority, which is corrupt and cavorts with terror...is not the basis for a Palestinian state moving forward".
Ms Rice's comments reflected Mr Arafat's deteriorating relationship with the United States, which has criticised him repeatedly as it seek reforms of the Palestinian Authority and as President Bush works on a Middle East peace plan.
Less than 24 hours after Sunday's inauguration of the year-long fence project, a suicide bomber killed only himself when he triggered a blast near a border police unit on Israel's side of the frontier north of the Palestinian city of Tulkarm.
"A border patrol unit saw a suspicious person and they called to him to stop. There was an explosion, he was apparently a suicide bomber," a border police spokeswoman said.
She said there were no Israeli casualties. Palestinians fear Israel will seize West Bank land as it marks out the $220 million barrier after 20 months of conflict, and that it will stop Palestinians from entering Israel, where thousands work illegally after eluding Israeli roadblocks.
In the West Bank village of El Khader near Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers shot dead a militant from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group whose suicide bombings have killed dozens of Israelis, witnesses said.
Soldiers stationed 200 metres from the village appeared to pick out Mr Walid Sbeich (30) as he drove his car down its main street and shot him, they said.
An army spokeswoman had no immediate comment, but army radio said Israeli snipers had shot Mr Sbeich and that he had recruited suicide bombers.
Mr Arafat has responded to growing US and Israeli pressure for reforms by announcing the Palestinians will hold legislative and presidential elections in December or January and by condemning suicide bombings inside Israel.
But he says reforms, such as streamlining the security forces and cracking down on militants, are hampered by frequent Israeli military raids into Palestinian-ruled areas and by military blockades across the West Bank.
Two Palestinians were wounded, one critically, by Israeli army fire at a checkpoint near the northern West Bank town of Ramallah tonight, Palestinian medical sources said.
Troops opened fire on the two men as they tried to cross a closed-off military checkpoint on a road leading south from the village of Surda towards Ramallah, the medical sources said.
One of the men, who was hit in the head by live bullets, was said to be in "critical" condition and was undergoing surgery, they added.
The other was hit in the leg by rubber bullets, but was said to be only lightly hurt.