Difficult second meeting for Sharon, Abbas

A tense afternoon summit Tuesday between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ended with few concessions from either side.

Mr. Sharon did, however, say he would agree to hand over two towns to Palestinian control if Mr. Abbas is successful in reining in militants and keeping a lid on violence.

For Abbas's part, he pledged, according to Palestinian officials, to work toward "one authority, one gun" in the territories, meaning he'll attempt to disarm Palestinian factions or put them under the command of his security chiefs.

While the summit avoided any decisions on the toughest of issues - Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza and the northern West Bank or gestures aimed at easing conditions for Palestinians - the fact that these two leaders have met twice in five months is a positive step for Palestinian-Israeli relations since former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's death in November.

But amid domestic difficulties for both Sharon and Abbas, analysts doubt whether the two would have met without outside prodding. Sharon has seen support for the Gaza disengagement drop in the wake of attacks by Palestinian militants, and Abbas faces disappointment with the lack of progress on easing hardship conditions in the West Bank and continued internal infighting among armed groups.

"The meeting probably wouldn't have taken place without American pressure on Sharon," says Yossi Alpher, the former head of Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies. "In many ways it's punching a card, to check off that we've done this. This is not a crucial dramatic summit, by any means."

At the first Sharon-Abbas meeting, a four-way summit with Egypt and Jordan held at a Sinai resort town, the leaders committed themselves to a truce in the fighting that broke out in September 2000. But the cease-fire has been incomplete, with Israel accusing the Palestinians of failing to confront militants, and the Palestinians blaming Israel for not removing roadblocks or keeping control over cities in the West Bank.

Israel has been moving ahead with a plan to evacuate 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank. The effort to cooperate on the pullback were buoyed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's announcement Sunday of an agreement on the demolition of 1,200 settler houses, and on Monday Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres reached a compromise to enable Israel to withdraw troops.

A Palestinian official warned that the summit would be a failure if it focused solely on Israel's unilateral disengagement rather than easing conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Sharon offered to hand over security responsibility for the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Qalqilya to the Palestinian Authority in two weeks, and allow work on an airport and seaport in Gaza. But the gestures were conditioned on a drop in violence by Palestinian militants.

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