.bmp)
.bmp)
JERUSALEM-Israel said on Tuesday it would allow up to 600 members of a Palestinian security force trained in Jordan under a U.S. program to be deployed in a West Bank city once considered a hotbed of militant activity.Israel hopes the Defense Ministry decision, announced ahead of a weekend visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will help blunt Western and Palestinian complaints that it was not doing enough to bolster U.S.-backed peace talks and a Palestinian "law and order" campaign in the occupied West Bank.Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak will inform Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of the decision when they meet on Wednesday. A defense official said the Palestinians will decide how many troops, now on the U.S.-funded training course in Jordan,to deploy in Jenin,a city in the northern West Bank. Fayyad said he would "wait and see" what comes out of his meeting with Barak, adding that the Palestinians already had forces in Jenin and other West Bank cities. "The Palestinian Authority is capable of achieving security," he said.Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel-Razak al-Yahya told Reuters: "We will deploy those forces that are training in Jordan where our security conditions require them to be and based upon Palestinian decisions." Palestinian forces deployed in the larger West Bank city of Nablus in November as part of Fayyad's law-and-order campaign.Fayyad and some U.S. officials have accused Israel of undermining Palestinian Authority security efforts in Nablus by refusing to curtail army raids into the city.Israeli troops clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians in a Nablus refugee camp on Tuesday.To read more go to :
As in the days of Noah....
