Bethlehem standoff near an end

Associated Press

BETHLEHEM, West Bank – Palestinian officials said early today that a deal had been struck to end a monthlong standoff at the Church of Nativity, although a top Israeli official said there had been progress but no agreement.

Israeli officials said negotiations continued as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived in the United States for talks with President Bush.

However, The Los Angeles Times on Sunday night reported that both sides had agreed to an accord.

More than 200 Palestinians, including about 30 gunmen, fled into the church April 2, ahead of invading Israeli forces, at the height of Israel’s large-scale incursion into the West Bank.

“The deal consists of six to eight people to be (deported to) Italy and more than 30 to Gaza,” said Hassan Abed Rabbo, a senior in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party. About 100 people are still in the church, including clerics and some protesters. Palestinians said the rest would be freed from the church, which marks the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

But Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Yarden Vatikay denied that a deal had been reached. “There is no agreement yet,” he told The Associated Press. “They are negotiating our demands for people to be deported.”

Palestinian officials said the accord was worked out by the Vatican and the European Union.

In the wake of last month’s large-scale Israeli military offensive in the West Bank, Bethlehem is the only Palestinian city still occupied by Israeli troops. But brief incursions and raids into Palestinian cities and towns continued Sunday.

Israeli soldiers mistakenly shot and killed a woman and her two small children in a vineyard in the northern West Bank after an explosive went off under their tank, Israeli military officials said.

The military expressed regret over the killings and said soldiers had fired on suspicious figures after the explosion, according to Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The woman’s husband and four other men, farmers who had been working in the vineyard, were arrested by soldiers, witnesses said.

Early today, two Palestinians were killed and two Israeli soldiers were wounded after an hours-long fire fight in a citrus grove near the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said. In another incident, Israeli troops shot and killed a 9-year-old Palestinian boy in the Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank.

Sharon left Sunday for the United States with a 91-page booklet of documents that Israel claims prove Arafat is directly involved in funding terrorists.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo labeled the booklet “ridiculous” and said that all the documents were forged.

One document is a request for funding for militants including Raed Karmi, head of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, responsible for dozens of attacks against Israel. On the document Arafat writes, “Allocate $600 for each one,” and signs his name.

Palestinians say the money was for political and social activities, not attacks. Karmi was killed Jan. 14 in an explosion widely attributed to Israel.

The United States is committed to a Palestinian state with Arafat as its likely leader, President Bush’s foreign policy advisers reaffirmed Sunday, heading off opposition expected from Israel’s prime minister at his White House meeting this week.

Administration officials also are looking for a radical overhaul of Palestinian governance, ending corruption and quashing terror.

Sharon has said that Arafat is “irrelevant” and a terrorist. U.S. officials said Arafat. who has yet to meet with Bush. still represents the Palestinians.

“It serves us all better if we continue to work with all Palestinian leaders and to recognize who the Palestinian people look to as their leader,” Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC’s “This Week.”