Israeli injured in train blast

An Israeli was injured in a bomb attack on a train near Tel Aviv today, a day after Israelis and Palestinians resumed talks on easing the restrictions placed on Palestinians.

The explosion went off on the tracks in the town of Yavneh and damaged the engine of the passenger train, police said. The train’s engineer was injured in the abdomen from the force of the blast but the train was not derailed, police said.

The bomb was set off by remote control and weighed about five kilos (11 pounds), police said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but police said they believed Palestinian militants were responsible.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who led the Israelis in last night’s talks with Palestinians, said today that teams from both sides would meet in the coming days to discuss ways of removing, or at least easing, the measures the Israeli army has imposed on many West Bank areas for the past month.

Peres met for three hours with a delegation headed by Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister.

One of the main subjects in the upcoming talks will be the possible transfer of income and sales taxes that Israel has collected on behalf of the Palestinians, but has withheld for months.

Israel is now holding about 600 million dollars (£380 million), saying it doesn’t want to release the money to the Palestinian Authority, because Israel believes it has been funding terror attacks against Israel.

Israel will not transfer the funds until an international committee is set up to oversee how the money is handled, Peres said.

On another issue, Israel would be prepared to withdraw troops from the Palestinian cities and towns areas where Palestinian security can prevent attacks, Peres said.

‘‘We have no interest in staying in those places where the Palestinians can prove that they can take control,’’ Peres told Israel Radio.

But the Palestinians said they can’t prevent attacks if the Israelis are in control and the Palestinian forces are not allowed to operate in a normal manner, Israel Radio reported.

Much of today’s meeting focused on efforts to boost the Palestinian economy, which has been shattered by nearly 22 months of fighting and more recently by Israel’s occupation of West Bank cities.

Before fighting erupted in September 2000, an estimated 125,000 Palestinians crossed daily into Israel for work. Israel has since blocked most Palestinians from entering. Closures in the West Bank and curfews in individual towns have further prevented Palestinians from working.

Peres told the Palestinians that 7,000 work permits would be issued in the coming days as long as there were no attacks. It was not immediately clear if the attack on the train today would change the Israeli decision.

Israel had considered issuing the work permits earlier this month but froze the plan when two attacks last week killed 12 Israelis.

An aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, said any success in the meetings would be contingent on Israel’s withdrawal from West Bank areas it has occupied in the past month.