Jerusalem blast wrecks any hope of early peace talks

By Mideast standards it was a pinprick attack, but a car bomb blast in Jerusalem today pushed peace talks even further into the distance.

Israel’s new hard-line leadership warned immediately it will not negotiate while there is violence.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. However, Islamic militants have been expected to try to stage attacks in Israel in the wake Ariel Sharon’s landslide election victory.

One of Sharon’s confidants, MP Limor Livnat, said the attack only strengthened the resolve of Israel’s new leadership not to resume negotiations with Palestinians as long as violence continues.

‘‘Certainly, the policy now will be that there will be no negotiations while we are under attack,’’ Livnat said.

‘‘They will be able to continue talking to us only when the attacks stop.’’

Speaking after the attack, Sharon said he informed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in a message sent earlier in the day that Israel was interested in resuming peace talks that broke off last month.

‘‘The government I will lead will make every effort to reach peace, but the condition for starting peace talks is the cessation of terror and violence,’’ Sharon said.

The back-to-back blasts went off just before 5 pm (1500 GMT) in a sidestreet of Beit Shmuel, an ultra-Orthodox district of Jerusalem, claimed as a capital by both Israelis and Palestinians.

‘‘It was a car bomb,’’ said police chief Micky Levy. ‘‘The car was totally destroyed.’’

Some reports said the explosion was causgas canisters placed in the stolen car, as opposed to explosives, accounting for the relatively minor damage.

Levy said one person was injured lightly and taken to a hospital, and nine more people were suffering from shock.

Witnesses said that after the blast, car parts flew four storeys high into the air.

Earlier, a senior Sharon adviser said that the prime minister-elect rejects a key Palestinian demand that peace talks resme at the point they stopped under Israel’s previous government.

Sharon does not feel bounthe concessions his predecessor, Ehud Barak, made to the Palestinians, said the adviser, Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

‘‘There were offers by the previous government. All that was said, either verbally or as ideas, does not commit Israel or any government,’’ Shoval said a day after the Palestinian Cabinet affirmed the demand for continuity in the talks.

US President George W Bush called Arafat today. The Palestinian leader reaffirmed his commitment to settling the conflict with Israel peacefully, said the aide, Nabil Aburdeneh.

Palestinian officials said they have low expectations that negotiations, if they eventually resume, can produce results. Sharon has ruled out more land concessions and said he was only interested in reaching an interim, not a final agreement.

Palestinian officials said privately they did not expect Sharon to stay in power for too long. Sharon will be forced to step down if he fails to form a coalition and get a 2001 budget approved by March 31. Sharon is courtins centre-left Labour Party which would lend his government greater stability.

Sharon said today he was determined to bring Labour into his government ‘s quickly as possible. If rebuffed, he would have to work with a slew of right-wing, religious and small centrist factions with conflicting agendas.

Negotiations with Labour were to begin tonight. Barak, who said he would resign as party leader, said he would lead his party’s negotiating team before stepping down.