Israel and the Palestinians failed to agree on Sunday on terms for the handover of four West Bank cities to Palestinian security control in a fresh setback to the U.S.-backed road map to peace.

Israel had been poised to transfer the West Bank cities of Qalqiliya and Jericho to Palestinian security control as early as Monday, but the handover was temporarily shelved after a dispute arose in talks between senior security officials.

As a result, a meeting of field commanders tentatively scheduled for Monday to finalize the handover was called off.

"The meeting failed to reach a timetable of Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities," said Elias Zananiri, a spokesman for Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan.

The disagreement was yet another hitch for a U.S.-backed peace plan aimed at ending three years of violence and preparing the ground for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by 2005.

Zananiri said the main sticking point was Israel's refusal to dismantle checkpoints surrounding Qalqiliya, Jericho, Tulkarm and Ramallah, the seat of Palestinian government, which curtail the movement of local residents.

"We are not interested in cosmetic pullouts," he said, adding the Palestinians hoped for Israeli flexibility on the matter in a meeting scheduled for Tuesday.

Israeli officials gave a different account, saying the dispute arose over the fate of militants on Israel's wanted list who Israel wants kept under close surveillance by Palestinian security forces, Israel Radio reported.

DISARM AND DISMANTLE

Israel, seconded by Washington, has called repeatedly on Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to disarm and dismantle militant groups as mandated by the road map peace plan, and ruled out significant pullbacks from occupied land until then. Abbas, citing concerns that a crackdown against militants could spark a civil war, instead coaxed a unilateral truce from militant groups on June 29 to shore up the peace plan.

But the cease-fire could be in peril following a vow by the Islamic Jihad group to avenge Israel's killing on Thursday of its cell commander in the West Bank city of Hebron -- a move Israel said pre-empted a major suicide bombing.

Officials on Sunday said Israel was willing to withdraw from Jericho and Qalqiliya in the next few days, and Tulkarm and Ramallah, by the end of the month due to increased efforts by the Palestinian Authority to rein in militants.

Palestinian officials told Reuters Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had relented on the demand militants be rounded up as part of the handover deal he reached on Friday with Dahlan.

Mofaz denied he had softened his position. "I think that the opposite is true. We insist that the Palestinian Authority dismantle the terror infrastructures and we will not make any kind of concessions regarding our security," he said.

Israel, however, signaled it did not expect Palestinian security forces to launch a campaign to detain militants in the cities slated for transfer.

A senior Israeli official said Israel and the Palestinians hoped to finalize arrangements on "supervising wanted men" that did not necessarily entail imprisonment. "If they are not behind bars, we will want at least to know where they are," he said.

The Palestinian officials said they believed Israel would now settle for militants being "contained" as long as they ceased attacks.

(China Daily    August 18, 2003)