Arafat proposes ex-negotiator as Palestinian PM
By Wafa Amr and Mohammed Assadi

Ramallah - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat  nominated moderate parliamentary speaker Ahmed Korei as prime minister Sunday, a decision that could lift fading peace hopes.

Korei, a former peace negotiator with Israel who is also known as Abu Ala, did not say whether he would accept Arafat's offer to replace Mahmoud Abbas, who quit Saturday in a power struggle.

Soon after Arafat's decision, Israel launched the latest in a series of missile strikes against Islamic militant groups. Helicopter gunships attacked a target near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip  but details were not immediately known.

Korei's credentials as a highly regarded moderate and an architect of the 1993 interim Oslo peace accords with Israel could endear him to the United States and could raise hopes of salvaging a U.S.-led peace plan.

"The president expressed his wish to name Abu Ala as prime minister," cabinet minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told Reuters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The decision was later approved by the Palestine Liberation Organization 's Executive Committee and the Fatah  faction, and the next stage is for Arafat to seek Korei's acceptance.

Abbas, who had tried to institute sweeping reforms, quit on Saturday, complaining that his peacemaking efforts were being blocked by Arafat and were not receiving enough support from the Untied States and Israel.

Israeli officials said Abbas's decision to quit was a blow to peace hopes and renewed calls for Arafat's expulsion.

The nomination of Korei, 65, could stabilize weeks of political confusion in the Palestinian Authority , which has heightened concern that the U.S.-led "road map" leading to peace and a Palestinian state by 2005 may now beyond saving.

A senior Palestinian official said Korei was studying the proposal. A response was expected early in the week, he said.

ARCHITECT OF PEACE ACCORDS

The United States, the key Middle East peacebroker, is eager to see a strong prime minister running the Palestinian Authority and controlling its security forces in place of Arafat, who Washington accuses of fomenting violence. Arafat denies this.

White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice , speaking on U.S. television, said Arafat had hamstrung Abbas in his efforts to control the security forces.

She urged the Palestinian Authority to "get an empowered prime minister and let him work."

Dennis Ross, a former U.S. Middle East envoy, said that while Korei's credentials as a peacemaker were well established, "the issue was not who is the prime minister, the issue was whether he's going to be constrained by Arafat."

The crisis was heightened Saturday when an Israeli missile hit Gaza in an apparent assassination bid against wheelchair-bound Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Yassin was only slightly wounded, and the group vowed revenge.

Missiles fired by helicopter gunships hit an apartment building near the Khan Younis refugee camp late Sunday but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon  told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper Hamas leaders were "marked for death." He vowed to keep up a hunt for them, which intensified after a suicide bomber killed 22 people on a Jerusalem bus on August 19.

Israel declared a military closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and police stepped up their presence on Israeli streets.

ABBAS LASTED ONLY FOUR MONTHS IN OFFICE

Abbas made clear that his resignation stemmed not only from his rift with Arafat but also from what he saw as the failure of Israel and the United States to back his peace efforts.

Arafat appointed Abbas, the second most powerful leader in the PLO, as prime minister in April under intense international pressure to reform the Palestinian Authority and decentralize power.

Israel quickly ruled out any talks with the Palestinian leadership if it were controlled by Arafat. But top officials went a step further Sunday, saying Israel should deport the former guerrilla leader from the Palestinian territories.

"I think Arafat's expulsion is an inevitable result after years of involvement in terrorism," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Radio, expressing support for such a move.

He said any decision would await "a strategic discussion" in the cabinet, but gave no date.

Other ministers have called in the past for Arafat to be ousted, but Sharon has overruled them, fearing an international backlash. The United States has frowned upon the idea.

Arafat, the icon of Palestinian nationalism who led interim peace deals with Israel in the 1990s, has denied U.S. and Israeli allegations he has encouraged violence in the nearly three-year-old Palestinian uprising for statehood. -- Reuters

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