Deaths overshadow Middle East peace talks

Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs had their second US brokered meeting overnight, but the death of a leading Palestinian moderate and the killing of an Israeli motorist in the West Bank today overshadowed sputtering truce efforts.

The 63-year-old Israeli man died of severe head wounds suffered when Palestinian militants shot at his car in the northern West Bank, the army said.

The mood was also dampened by the death in Kuwait today of Faisal Husseini, 61, the top Palestine Liberation Organisation official in Jerusalem who was viewed as a moderate by many Israelis. He suffered a heart attack.

‘‘He was a man of peace,’’ said Menachem Klein, a political science professor who has served as an adviser to the government on Jerusalem issues. Klein said as recently as two months ago, Husseini had met with Israeli peace activists in a London hotel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, came under growing pressure from Jewish settlers to retaliate harshly for Palestinian shooting attacks on Israeli motorists in the West Bank.

In a condolence visit to the family of a settler killed in an ambush earlier this week, Sharon was evasive about a possible Israeli response.

‘‘I know exactly who we are dealing with,’’ Sharon said, referring to the Palestinian leadership and apparently unaware his comments were being taped.

‘‘For years already, I have been saying Arafat is primitive,’’ Sharon said

Infrastructure Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a hard-liner in Sharon’s cabinet, said Israel should immediately reoccupy Palestinian controlled areas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

‘‘In the next 48 hours we need to go into all Palestinian areas and destroy the entire infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority, destroy the weapons cache of their forces including those of the militias. Otherwise we will not be able to stop the violence,’’ he said.