Palestinian PM promises salaries in a few days

GAZA, May 30 (Reuters) Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh today pledged to pay salaries within days to thousands of government employees who have not received wages since March as a result of an international funds freeze.

Haniyeh, in comments to his Hamas-led government, did not disclose the source of the funds. Palestinian banks have so far refused to transfer money to the Authority, fearing US sanctions.

''I would like to announce that the Ministry of Finance will begin to pay a full month's wages to those earning a monthly salary of up to 1,500 shekels. The number of those employees is 40,000,'' Haniyeh said.

He also promised to pay each of the other 125,000 government workers, who earn higher salaries, an advance of 1,500 shekels. The pledged payments could total nearly 55 million dollars, a sum the government could partially meet using internal tax revenues.

International donors have frozen payments to the Palestinian government, demanding Hamas, an Islamic militant group that came to power after a January election, recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept previous interim peace deals.

Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, has said negotiations with the Jewish state would be a waste of time.

Haniyeh made the pledge as the clock ticked down on a 10-day ultimatum from moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to soften its hard line against Israel or face a referendum on peacemaking in July. Abbas's deadline ends this weekend.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, some 1,200 unpaid civil servants held a protest outside the prime minister's office, demanding their pay.

GAZA RAID In violence in the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers shot dead three members of a Palestinian rocket squad in the army's first ground raid into the territory since an Israeli pullout last year.

A Palestinian policeman, who witnesses said rushed to the scene with medics, was also killed by the troops in the brief operation marking a new Israeli military response to frequent cross-border rocket barrages that have caused few casualties.

In the occupied West Bank, soldiers killed at least two Palestinian gunmen in separate operations.

Abbas, who has called for the rocket strikes to stop, condemned the Israeli raids as ''unjustified escalation that will lead the region into further deterioration and instability''.

At least three of the dead in the Gaza incursion were identified as gunmen from the militant Islamic Jihad group and the fourth man belonged to the Force 17 presidential guard.

''The fighters were firing rockets into Israel in retaliation for the continued Israeli crimes and the assassination of Abu Hamza al-Majzoub in Lebanon,'' an Islamic Jihad statement said, referring to a car bombing that killed a senior official of the group in south Lebanon on Friday.

An Israeli government source said at the time that Israel had nothing to do with the killing.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said the overnight fighting marked the first ground combat in Gaza since Israel withdrew its troops and dismantled 21 Jewish settlements there in August and September.

Israeli troops have on occasion ventured across the border fence to dismantle bombs, the army spokeswoman said.

An Islamic Jihad member was killed and three other militants wounded in the northern West Bank village of Qabatia. In a Palestinian refugee camp near the city of Nablus, a wanted militant was shot dead and another wounded.

Witnesses said a third militant was killed by troops in the town of Anabta. But the army denied operating in the area.

REUTERS SY BD1948