Palestinians to discuss wider truce with Israel

GAZA, Mar 7 (Reuters) Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas are to sound out militant groups on extending a ceasefire with Israel from Gaza to the West Bank, officials said today.

Abbas and Haniyeh discussed the prospects of a broad ceasefire with leaders of some factions late last night, officials said.

Palestinian officials said Abbas's aide Saeb Erekat had asked leaders of Islamic Jihad and other militant factions to meet them later on Wednesday continue to explore the possibility of a wider ceasefire.

A source close to the two leaders' talks on forming a unity government said Abbas wants to raise the idea when he meets Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert next week.

But a senior leader of Islamic Jihad, a group that carried out a suicide bombing in Israel in January and did not sign a Gaza truce in November, said it opposed the idea raised in negotiations on finalising a unity government.

''We cannot talk about calm while the Zionist aggression is continuing against our Palestinian people in the West Bank and the escalation against Islamic Jihad members and leaders,'' the leader, Khaled al-Batsh, said.

Israel has killed three Islamic Jihad militants in raids in the occupied West Bank since a January 29 suicide attack in the Red Sea resort of Eilat killed three Israelis.

Batsh said his group was planning attacks to avenge the deaths of its men.

PRISONERS Olmert spokeswoman Miri Eisin brushed aside the proposal for a wider ceasefire. ''We need to see that you can actually implement the ceasefire (in Gaza) before we can consider an extension,'' she said.

She said Israel has not responded to rocket fire since the ceasefire in Gaza took effect. ''It's about time Palestinians deliver on a promise instead of just Israel delivering on ours.'' Even if a ceasefire were extended, Eisin said Israel would not back away from its demands that the new Palestinian government recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept interim peace deals.

''Those principles are not for negotiation,'' she said.

Abbas wants to widen the ceasefire to include a cessation of Israel's West Bank raids and Palestinian attacks from the territory as part of a deal that would free a captive Israeli soldier and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Olmert has said he would only discuss such a truce as part of an agreement to release the Israeli captive, Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized by militants in a cross-border raid from Gaza into Israel in June.

Hamas and Fatah, the long-dominant faction the Islamist group defeated in a January 2006 election, are still divided over the appointment of an interior minister who would be in charge of Palestinian security forces.

Palestinians hope a coalition government would lead to the resumption of direct aid to the Palestinian Authority that Western donors cut off when Hamas came to power.

Hamas has rejected demands by the ''Quartet'' of West Asia mediators -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations'' -- to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace accords.

The November ceasefire largely halted confrontations with Israel in Gaza, although some factions have continued firing rockets into the Jewish state sporadically.

REUTERS SP BST1940