Global Policy Forum

Israel and the Palestinians welcomed Wednesday a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to bloodshed in their 17-month-old conflict, but the killing continued.

The US-sponsored resolution affirmed "a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognised borders."

It went on to "demand the immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction".

Both the Palestinian observer to the United Nations, Nasser al-Kidwa, and the Israeli ambassador, Yehuda Lancry, welcomed the text, adopted as Resolution 1397. Lancry described it as balanced and said he said he drew two lessons from the text: "You cannot combine the practice of terrorism and the practice of peace" and there must be a ceasefire before starting negotiations.

In Jerusalem, a senior Israeli official said his country was "positive" about the resolution, in a first, unofficial reaction.

"Our UN representative ... reacted positively to the text that for the first time gave a political dimension to UN resolutions 242 and 338" on trading Israeli-occupied territories for peace, the official, who requested anonymity, told AFP.

He said the Israeli foreign ministry would study the resolution before issuing an official reaction, which he expected to come later Wednesday morning.

Al-Kidwa said the council resolution would "will help the situation on the ground" and that it was "indeed significant" that the United States had sponsored the text.

Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman said the resolution was an "advance."

Interviewed by Qatar's Al-Jazeera television, he said: "It's an advance for the resistance of the Palestinian people, which the government of (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon does not recognize by trying to eliminate the national authority."

The resolution provides "strong international backing to the valiant resistance of the Palestinian people in the face of the Israeli war machine," Abdel Rahman said.

The US ambassador, John Negroponte, said the United States had opposed previous resolutions because they "demonstrated a one-sided tendency to favour the Palestinian point of view and to isolate Israel".

The new text contained a "strong statement against terrorism" and would "give an impulse to peace efforts" which must be undertaken chiefly by the Israelis and the Palestinians themselves, he said.

He was speaking just ahead of the arrival in the region Thursday of US peace envoy Anthony Zinni, who will seek yet again to broker a ceasefire.

Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general, will be greeted by grim statistics.

More than 225 people having been killed since the end of February, and the death toll now stands at 1,514, including 1,169 Palestinians and 339 Israelis.

The latest death came early Wednesay, when Israeli troops killed the deputy commander of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Force 17 bodyguard in Ramallah during a gunfight in the centre of the West Bank city

Israeli public radio said Colonel Abu Fadih was considered by the government to be the head of a cell in the Tanzim -- an armed group attached to Arafat's Fatah movement -- responsible for the deaths of at least 15 Israelis.

Israeli troops had occupied Ramallah Tuesday in their biggest operation in 20 years.

Almost 40 people died as the army took Ramallah and suspected Palestinian gunmen hit back in northern Israel, raining bullets and grenades at traffic on a road near the Lebanese border, killing six Israelis before being shot dead.

Heavy exchanges of gunfire were continuing in the centre of Ramallah and the approaches to the city Wednesday morning, witnesses said, with an Israeli soldier wounded in the fighting.

Meanwhile, 14 Israeli tanks and troop transports had pulled out of El-Bireh, next to Ramallah, and headed toward the Jewish settlement of Beit El, a few kilometres (miles) away.

An Israeli settler guarding the entrance to the Dolev settlement near Ramallah had had been seriously wounded earlier by gunmen who then fled the scene.

Tusday's operations prompted UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to appeal to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Arafat to lead their peoples "away from disaster."

A defiant Palestinian leadership said: "Our people will not give way in the face of (Israeli) aggression; they will defend themselves by their historic and courageous resistance."

The new UN resolution also called on Israelis and Palestinians to "cooperate in the implementation of the Tenet work plan and Mitchell Report recommendations with the aim of resuming negotiations on a political settlement."

It also welcomed "the contribution of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah," who has proposed that Arab states offer "complete peace" in exchange for full Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab land.

Earlier this week, US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice singled out the Saudi peace overture, which she said recognised that "there ought to be normalisation of relations" between the Arab world and the Israelis.

She said Zinni would have "a kind of renewed mandate" to try to implement a ceasefire plan put together last year by US Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet.

In the meantime, Sharon began a meeting of his security cabinet Wednesday morning to discuss his plans for creating security buffer zones between Israel and the West Bank and for the protection of Jewish settlements on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C íŸ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.