MIDDLE EAST: US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell is coming back to the Middle East later this week to try to rekindle the high hopes of the Aqaba peace summit two weeks ago, after more than 60 Israelis and Palestinians have died in subsequent violence.
Mr Powell, who will be in Jordan on Thursday, Israel on Friday, and is also expected to meet with Palestinian leaders, will be hoping that a flurry of negotiations involving Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mr Mahmoud Abbas, heads of Hamas and other extremist groups, and Egyptian and American mediators, will by then have yielded an Intifada ceasefire agreement.
While Mr Abbas was again meeting Hamas leaders in Gaza yesterday, the Egyptian mediators were seeking endorsement for a truce from Hamas members elsewhere in the Arab world and Israeli officials were returning from Washington after putting their terms to National Security Adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice and other members of the Bush administration.
The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Olmert, meanwhile, denied suggestions that Mr Marwan Barghouti, the head of Palestinian Authority President Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction in the West Bank, would be set free as part of a ceasefire deal.
Mr Arafat yesterday telephoned Mr Barghouti's wife and claimed he would be released today or tomorrow from an Israeli jail.
He is on trial for murder, charged with direct involvement in attacks in which 26 Israelis died. Mr Olmert said it was "unthinkable that the state of Israel would pardon or free a man like that".
In a dramatic reversal of his previous positions, a senior Hamas official in Gaza, Mr Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, said yesterday that Hamas was now prepared to halt attacks on "those we define as civilians".
He added, however, that his definition of civilians did not match that of the international legal community. It does not include "settlers" - Israelis living in West Bank, East Jerusalem or Gaza Strip territory outside sovereign Israel.
Hamas, which is ideologically committed to the destruction of Israel, has been enormously reluctant to endorse any kind of ceasefire.
But the Israeli government of Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon has markedly stepped up attempts to kill Hamas gunmen, bombers and leaders since the Aqaba summit - narrowly failing to kill Mr Rantisi himself.
And the various mediators have made plain to Hamas that if it does not accede to a ceasefire, Israel will further intensify such actions, with US support, and growing sympathy from the member-states of the European Union.
Last week's Hamas-orchestrated suicide bombing in Jerusalem, in which 17 Israelis were killed, has prompted growing support for the EU to follow the US in outlawing Hamas in its entirety, and not just its "military wing" as at present.
Mr Sharon is said to have agreed with the US to move forward on some of the provisions of the so-called "road map" to Palestinian statehood - including a withdrawal of Israeli troops from their forward positions in the West Bank and Gaza - if Mr Abbas demonstrates that he would use the calmer atmosphere produced by a ceasefire to ensure the dismantling of the "infrastructure of terrorism".
This he would do by arresting Hamas bombers, confiscating weaponry and closing down bomb factories.
Although Israeli officials deny this, the officials Mr Sharon despatched to the US - including the head of the Shin Bet security service - are said to have assured Ms Rice and other leading officials in the Bush administration that Israel would suspend its assassination attempts on Hamas and other Intifada kingpins, with the exception of bombers en route to carry out an attack, as long as the ceasefire holds.