The CIA director Mr George Tenet had discussions with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat today on building a unified Palestinian security force, which Washington wants to curb suicide bombings against Israel.
Israel has made any resumption of peace negotiations conditional on a end to such violence and wide-ranging reforms within Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is expected to repeat the demands when he meets US President George W. Bush at the White House next week, a month after a previous visit was cut short by a suicide bombing near Tel Aviv in which 15 Israelis died.
Mr Tenet, who met Mr Sharon yesterday, is on a mission Bush said was aimed at building a united Palestinian force that will fight terror. The Palestinian Authority has nine separate and sometimes rival security services.
"It's a free-for-all. It's dangerous", Israeli Foreign Minister Mr Shimon Peres said. "We hope that Mr Tenet will help them to build a structure which will contain a central authority over all arms. (Arafat) won't do it willingly but I think circumstances will force him to do so."
Palestinian officials have said Israel's five-week West Bank offensive from late March to early May and the daily rolling raids into Palestinian cities that have followed made it impossible for the security services to function.
In the latest incursion, Israeli tanks and troops briefly raided the West Bank town of Jenin before Arafat and Tenet began their meeting in Ramallah.
Military sources said the army had received reports of the whereabouts of wanted militants but the reports proved wrong and soldiers left after an hour.
In the West Bank village of Beit Omar, near the city of Hebron, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian teenager, witnesses said. The army said soldiers fired rubber-coated metal bullets at rock-throwing youths.