Sharon - Israel should have killed Arafat 20 years ago

JERUSALEM -- Israel should have killed Yasser Arafat 20 years ago, while he was under Israeli siege in Beirut, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview published Thursday.

Sharon said he was "sorry we didn't liquidate him," but that Arafat could yet become a partner for peace if he cracked down on Palestinian militants.

Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh said the remark was a "provocation" and Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat called it a thinly-veiled threat to kill Arafat.

"If he was expressing his sorrow and regret for not killing President Arafat in 1982, this means he wants to fix his mistake," Erekat said.

In the Gaza Strip, two Islamic militants detonated a roadside bomb and opened fire on a truck carrying Thai farm hands to Jewish settlements. Soldiers escorting the truck returned fire, killing the two assailants, the army said. The truck was damaged, but the workers were not injured. The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Meanwhile, a letter written this week by a top Israeli government official said the government never formally adopted the so-called Mitchell Report, a key U.S.-backed plan for restarting Mideast peace talks that would require Israel to freeze settlements activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Erakat accused Israel of "deceiving" U.S. mediators by appearing to accept the plan -- which the Palestinians formally agreed to soon after its release last year.

Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin said last year that Israel had "accepted and adopted" the report. But the letter from Israeli Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar to an opposition lawmaker said that while Israel "expressed a positive stance," there was no Cabinet vote accepting it.

Memorial march

In the West Bank town of Ramallah, about 3,000 mourners joined a memorial march for Wafa Idris, a 27-year-old paramedic who planted a bomb in downtown Jerusalem this week, killing herself and an 81-year-old Israeli man.

Idris was the first woman bomber since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting 16 months ago.

"Wafa expressed the feelings of all Palestinian women who wanted to participate in the fight against occupation," Rabeeha Thiab, head of the Fatah women's movement, told the crowd. "No one can prevent women from taking part in this war of liberating Palestine."

After the rally, gunmen from the Ammari refugee camp where Idris lived opened fire on the nearby Jewish settlement of Psagot.