The Black Vault - Israel, Palestinians Seal Gaza Disengagement Deal

Adds militants to hold Cairo talks, paragraph 10, U.S. comment, 12-14;

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel and the Palestinians agreed a disengagement deal in the Gaza Strip on Friday and Hamas said it decided to suspend attacks on Israelis -- dramatic moves driven by U.S. pressure to shore up a Middle East peace plan.

The announcements came on the eve of a visit to the region by U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice as Israel and the Palestinians jockeyed for pride of place in promoting the "road map" personally backed by President Bush.

"An agreement has been reached on the issue of the (Israeli) withdrawal from Gaza and Bethlehem in the meeting that took place today between Israeli and Palestinian security officials," said a Palestinian official, who declined to be identified.

A senior Israeli political source called the disengagement deal, mediated by U.S. Middle East envoy John Wolf, an agreement in principle and said details of a troop pullback in Bethlehem, in the West Bank, had not been finalized.

He said that in accordance with the peace plan, affirmed at a June 4 Middle East summit attended by Bush, the army would start leaving on Monday areas of the Gaza Strip that Israel reoccupied during a 33-month-old Palestinian revolt.

Palestinian forces would assume security control and ensure militants did not fire mortar bombs and Qassam rockets at Jewish settlements and towns in Israel, the source said.

He also said Palestinian security forces would be given a chance to act on Israeli tips on any pending attacks by militants before Israel launched "track-and-kill" operations.

Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin announced his group had decided to halt anti-Israeli attacks in an uprising for statehood. Washington has branded the militant group an "enemy of peace" for suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis.

"Hamas has studied all the developments and has reached a decision to call a truce, or a suspension of fighting activities," Yassin told Reuters.

But Yassin said a truce would carry conditions and be declared only after Hamas and other militant groups agreed on a joint statement. Members of the main Palestinian groups arrived in Cairo on Friday for inter-faction talks on a cease-fire.

U.S. SAYS TRUCE MUST BE FOLLOWED BY CRACKDOWN ON MILITANTS

A senior Israeli government source said a Hamas truce would not be "worth the paper it's written on." He repeated Israel's bedrock position that Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas must dismantle all militant factions.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher welcomed a truce as a "first step toward the end of violence and terror."

But he said it would need to be followed by the dismantling of the militant groups, a key part of the peace plan that envisages creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 after reciprocal steps by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

"A state can have only a single armed authority and cannot have to compete with armed authority from other groups," Boucher said.

Rice was likely to hammer home that point in talks with Abbas in the West Bank city of Jericho on Saturday.

Palestinian officials have said a confrontation with Hamas, an Islamic organization widely popular with Palestinians feeling the brunt of Israeli military action, could start a civil war.

Charting details of the Israeli pullback in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli source said Palestinians would be able to move freely on the area's main roads except for one near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, where a bypass route would be paved.

Israel also agreed to lift an edict banning Palestinians under the age of 35 from leaving the Gaza Strip. The source said buffer zones were to be established between the remaining Israeli troops guarding settlements and Palestinian forces.

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