Israel played down the US-led push for it to lift its siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, as the Palestinian's called off talks aimed at defusing the crisis. A senior Israeli official said the occupation army would not pull back despite US President George W. Bush's blunt criticism of the siege, which started last Thursday after two resistance bombings ended a six-week lull in attacks.

"This criticism must be placed in the global context, with the crisis in Iraq and the US desire to gain the broadest possible support against the Baghdad regime," the official said.

The official added that Israel would maintain the siege until the surrender of 20 wanted men among the 250 people holed up in the last remaining building of the devastated compound.

For his part, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said "there is no dispute" with Washington, just a differing of views.
But Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher said the United States is dissatisfied with Israel for the continuing siege and will work to bring it to an end.

Speaking from Washington after a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, he told Jordanian television "the American administration is not satisfied, in fact is displeased, with the Israeli position in this affair and considers it to be incomprehensible.

"The United States is showing awareness with regard to this problem, and serious American efforts will be made in a few days to bring about the lifting of the siege," he added.

The standoff continued Wednesday night, with the occupation army firing flares into the sky over the building and setting up powerful searchlights around it, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

Occupation army vehicles were also seen moving in the area, and a number of occupation soldiers emerged from a tank and approached the now leveled ground surrounding the building.

And a French rights activist who spent several weeks inside the compound during previous sieges said food and water are being rationed and that some people are suffering from respiratory or gastric ailments.

Israel shrugged off Tuesday a new UN resolution calling for an immediate end to the siege.

Bush said the siege was "not helpful" to implementing the political and security reforms Arafat was under pressure to push through, but he stopped short of calling on Israel to withdraw.

Chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said Wednesday the Palestinians had cancelled talks with Israel on tackling the stand-off after Israel prevented Arafat meeting with Western diplomats.

Erakat said Arafat had wanted to meet members of the so-called quartet on the Middle East, consisting of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.

"We wanted a meeting with members of the task force before meeting with the Israelis. Israel rejected this meeting and this is why there will be no Israeli-Palestinian discussions today," Erakat told AFP.

The task force includes the quartet, as well as major international donors Japan, Norway, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Erakat said Israel had denied UN Middle East coordinator Terje Roed-Larsen and European Union Middle East envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos access to the Ramallah compound.

But he said he had met with Roed-Larsen in his Jericho office and urged him to push for the implementation "without dealy" of UN resolution 1435, which was adopted Tuesday and calls for an immediate halt to the siege.

Arafat's Fatah faction had renewed its support for him in a message on Tuesday. But it insisted he not let the siege derail the badly needed political reforms, which many observers saw as a step towards democracy in a regime widely considered corrupt and autocratic.

Meanwhile, Israel pressed on with its relentless campaign of detentions across the West Bank.

Occupation troops arrested 11 wanted Palestinians, six of them in the northwest city of Tulkarem.

They also detained in Qalqilya the local chief of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah, a occupation army source said. Nidal Hanyeh, 32, is implicated in several anti-Israeli attacks, as well as recruiting four activists to carry out a resistance attack in July.

The occupation army also blew up three houses in the southern West Bank, which had been the homes of Palestinians who attacked Israel

PHOTO CAPTION

(Top L) Israeli occupation occupation soldiers blow up the house of an activist of the Islamic Jihad activist group in the West Bank city of Hebron September 25, 2002.. (Loay Abu Haykel/Reuters)
- Sep 25 3:35 PM ET

(Top R) An unindentified Palestinian waves from a window of the besieged office of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank City of Ramallah September 25, 2002. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
- Sep 25 10:46 AM ET

(Bottom L) A Palestinian boy uses a slingshot to throw stones towards Israeli tanks during clashes in the West Bank city of Nablus September 25, 2002. REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini
- Sep 25 8:38 AM ET

(Bottom R) An Israeli soldier walks beside a tank near the damaged compound of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, September 25, 2002.. Photo by Reuters
- Sep 25 3:36 PM ET