Palestinian premier 'will not use force against militants'

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said today that he will not use force to disarm the militant groups under any circumstances, despite two shootings over the weekend that killed five Israeli soldiers.

The violence threatened to derail Washington’s road map to peace for the region, and showed that the new premier had so far failed to bring the three main terrorist groups on board.

Abbas also defended himself against domestic complaints that he has been too conciliatory to Israel, including in a speech at a Mideast summit last week, and that Israel has given little in return.

Abbas said he has co-ordinated every move with Yasser Arafat – a barb at the veteran Palestinian president leader who last week said the summit in Jordan with US President George Bush had been a waste of time.

Meanwhile, Israel appeared to be making a first small step towards meeting part of its obligation under the road map to Palestinian statehood by 2005.

The military reportedly drew up a list of 15 West Bank settlement outposts, nearly all uninhabited, that are to be removed in coming days.

Under the road map, Israel has to dismantle dozens of outposts established since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to power in March 2001.

According to the Israeli settlement watchdog group Peace Now, there are 102 outposts with about 1,000 residents, including 62 outposts built since Sharon took office.

Sharon, a major settlement builder in his career, never promised explicitly to remove all 62 outposts, and has acknowledged he has differences with Bush on the issue.

His aides have said a distinction would be made between outposts considered legal and illegal, suggesting there would be less than full compliance with the road map.

The army was to present the list of sites to settler leaders today and ask that they voluntarily remove the small clusters of trailers from the hilltops, Israeli radio and TV stations said.

If the request is turned down, Israeli troops could begin dismantling the outposts themselves as early as this evening, the reports said.

The Israeli Defence Ministry declined to comment on the reports.

Settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein said he and his supporters would try to stop any outposts being removed.

“In no shape or form will we co-operate with this evacuation, and we will even fight against this with all our might,” he told Israel Army Radio.

The degree of resistance to the removal of isolated outposts will show how much of a fight settlers will put up in the event of a final peace deal, in which Israel would have to remove larger settlements.

About 220,000 settlers live in 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 war and claimed by the Palestinians for their future state.

The move came a day after yesterday’s shooting in Gaza – a rare joint attack by three militias on an army outpost. Four soldiers were killed in the attack, and a fifth later in an ambush in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Abbas said today that he will not order a crackdown on the militias under any circumstances because he wants to avoid civil war.

“There is absolutely no substitute for dialogue,” Abbas said at his first news conference since taking office on April 30, adding he still believes the armed groups would change their minds.

Abbas did not elaborate. However, Palestinian officials said the Egyptian intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, is working to restart ceasefire talks. Suleiman presided over previous truce efforts earlier this year.

Abbas said he was pressing ahead with the peace plan. In veiled criticism of the militants, Abbas said: “The suffering of the Palestinians should not be dealt with by incitement. It needs real solutions.”

But there was no sign of compromise. The Palestinians will not “surrender to the pressure exerted by Israel and the United States of America,” Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader, said yesterday.

“We are unified in the trenches of resistance.”