ISRAEL: With the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, due here this weekend, US officials were yesterday playing down any expectation of concrete progress from the visit.
They were insisting that the secretary's presence would serve to underline the administration's determination to follow up on its pre-Iraq war commitment to brokering eventual Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.
The officials said Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, would fly to Washington in about 10 days for talks with President Bush, and indicated that a first meeting between Mr Sharon and the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, might now have to wait for his return.
Aides to Mr Sharon said the US "fully shared" his scepticism about Mr Abbas's ability to confront Hamas and other extremist groups, and understood his insistence on waiting to see "real proof" of change on the ground before Israel could ease travel restrictions on Palestinians and withdraw some of its forces from West Bank cities.
In the meantime, Israel is maintaining its policy of killing key intifada leaders. In the north of the Gaza Strip yesterday, Iyad al-Bek, a Hamas leader blamed by Israel for orchestrating several attacks, was killed by missile fire.
Last night, a Palestinian man was killed when he drove alongside an Israeli tank near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army said the car was filled with explosives, and the driver was trying to blow up the tank.
The Israeli state forensic institute, meanwhile, reported that British journalist James Miller, shot dead in Gaza last week, had been hit in the throat, almost certainly by Israeli fire.