MIDDLE EAST: Two days after President Bush demanded that the Palestinian people elect a leadership untainted by terrorism as a precondition for progress towards statehood, Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority announced yesterday that new elections for the PA presidency and its legislative council would be held in mid-January.
It also specified a programme of imminent reforms, including moves towards financial transparency, the appointment of new judges, the renouncing of "fanaticism" in the school curriculum, and a restructuring of the security forces within three months - precisely the kind of transformation that Mr Bush had called for.
However, while the Minister of Information, Mr Yasser Abed-Rabbo, said it was not yet clear whether Mr Arafat intended to seek a second term in the presidential office to which he was elected in 1996, his Planning Minister, Mr Nabil Sha'ath, was adamant the Palestinian leader had "absolutely" made clear that he planned to stand again.
This despite Mr Bush's insistence that, as the head of a regime that was "encouraging not opposing, terrorism," Mr Arafat was an unacceptable negotiating partner.
Current opinion polls suggest that, were Mr Arafat to stand, he would be easily re-elected although, depending on the other candidates, not by the near nine-to-one majority with which he overwhelmed a septuagenarian Ramallah social worker, Samiha al-Khalil, last time around.
Reports yesterday indicated that the Bush administration had been persuaded of the Palestinian leader's personal complicity in terrorism by a $20,000 payment he had approved for the Al-Aqsa Brigades, a group pledging loyalty to Mr Arafat which has carried out a series of attacks on Israeli targets. Aides to Mr Arafat asserted the claim was "Israeli propaganda."
Further reports circulating here last night suggested that Mr Bush is now trying to win wider international support for the establishment of an international supervisory committee, involving the US and several other participants, to dispatch personnel to the Palestinian areas and oversee a committed effort to thwart the bombers, marginalise extremist groups and promote democratisation.
The election and reform timetable was announced in Jericho - the only West Bank city not now under renewed Israeli control - by Mr Saeb Erekat, a minister in the Palestinian cabinet. But he said that balloting could hardly go ahead "with tanks in every street. Voters cannot register while they are confined to their homes."
Mr Bush had called on Israel in his speech to withdraw its forces to the positions they held in September 2000, prior to the second intifada uprising - but only "as we make progress towards security". This phrase was regarded as representing tacit support for the current Israeli incursions, under which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now under curfew. The military operation was launched followed last week's two suicide bombings in Jerusalem and defined by Israel as an anti-terror campaign.
In Jenin yesterday, Bassam Saudi, a six-year-old Palestinian boy, was killed by Israeli fire - hit in the chest by bullets fired from a tank, according to Palestinian sources, who said that he and an older boy, who was injured, had been stoning the tank.
In Hebron, the army was last night attacking the main Palestinian headquarters compound, and demanding that 15 wanted men, hiding inside, surrender themselves.
Some 200 people have emerged from the compound in the past two days, including 40 men said by Israel to be terror suspects. The army said it had found more than 100 explosive devices in the compound - a former British police headquarters.
Immensely boosted by the Bush speech, Israel's Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon received another fillip yesterday, when a court in Brussels threw out a genocide suit brought against him by survivors of the 1982 massacre in Beirut's Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp, carried out by Israeli-backed "Christian" militiamen during Israel's war in Lebanon, when he was minister of defence.
The court ruled that since the accused was not in Belgium, he could not be investigated. Lawyers for the plaintiffs vowed to appeal. Israel hailed a victory "for law over politics".