Four Palestinians Die In Factional Fighting
Monday, June 5, 2006; Page A12
Four Palestinians Die In Factional Fighting
JERUSALEM -- At least four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were killed Sunday night in factional fighting between Fatah and Hamas gunmen. Among the dead, Gaza hospital officials said, were three armed men and the sister of one of them.
The clashes, which occurred in Khan Younis and Gaza City, followed word from advisers to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that he would give Hamas until Tuesday to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state on the land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war or face a nonbinding referendum on the issue. Hamas, a radical Islamic movement now running the Palestinian ministries, envisions a larger Palestinian state on land that now includes Israel.
Also Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged to meet with Abbas in an effort to revive peace negotiations that have been dormant for years. Olmert made his comments after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. He did not specify a date for his summit with Abbas, which would be the first between Israeli and Palestinian leaders since June 2005.
Some Palestinian Authority employees, who have gone nearly three months without pay because of a freeze in international aid and in the transfer of Palestinian tax revenue by Israel following Hamas's election victory in January, began receiving a portion of their back wages on Sunday. Civil servants and members of the security forces who make $325 a month or less were given one month's salary in the form of interest-free loans from local banks. Most of the authority's more than 150,000 employees received nothing.
-- Scott Wilson
ASIA
· HANOI -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the United States wants to expand its military relationship with Vietnam but has no plans to seek access to military facilities in the former enemy nation.
Arriving in Hanoi days after the United States signed a trade agreement with Vietnam, Rumsfeld planned to meet with the U.S. military team involved in finding and identifying the remains of hundreds of U.S. servicemen still missing from the Vietnam War.
· KABUL, Afghanistan -- NATO will double the number of soldiers in southern Afghanistan when it takes over security there from U.S. troops next month, seeking to quash the worst rebel violence since the Taliban's ouster, said Lt. Gen. David Richards, the NATO force commander.
