Powell's last-ditch shuttle to find peace

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Colin Powell began intensive negotiations yesterday to broker a Palestinian ceasefire and an Israeli pull-out from the West Bank, the minimum first steps towards bringing under control the worst Middle East crisis in decades.

After what was described as a "useful and constructive" first meeting with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, the US Secretary of State held further talks with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, in Tel Aviv. General Powell said the discussion was "very good and thorough".

Mr Sharon claimed America had agreed to host a Middle East peace conference. "This idea is acceptable to the United States and I estimate that within a short period of time the conference will indeed convene," he said. America was more cautious. A senior State Department official confirmed the idea had been discussed, but added: "There's still more discussion necessary on both sides to see how we would do it." The Palestinians dismissed the idea, with one negotiator calling it "a waste of time".

American and Palestinian officials will hold more talks today, before an expected second meeting between General Powell and Mr Arafat tomorrow. But the negotiations promise to be excruciatingly difficult. General Powell failed to secure a ceasefire agreement from Mr Arafat at yesterday's three-hour meeting in the Palestinian leader's rocket-scarred compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

The Palestinians "absolutely" pledged to curb violence against Israelis, a senior adviser to Mr Arafat said afterwards, but only if the Israeli military ended its 16-day invasion of Palestinian cities and villages in the West Bank.

Yesterday, the Israeli army agreed before the Supreme Court that soldiers removing the bodies of Palestinians from the Jenin refugee camp would have to be accompanied by representatives of the International Red Cross. It will be an achievement for the Red Cross to be allowed into the camp. The Israeli army has been refusing humanitarian organisations any access, even ambulances – a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

Professor Derek Pounder,a British forensic pathologist who was involved in the case at the Supreme Court, hopes to enter the Jenin camp today and examine some of the bodies. "There has been an attempt to bury the evidence and cover it up with silence," Professor Pounder told The Independent. "But in a long-term sense it doesn't matter if they block our access to the bodies. We know from the Balkans that the evidence doesn't entirely disappear."

The meeting between General Powell and Mr Arafat began with an hour-long monologue from the Palestinian leader focusing on the humanitarian plight of his people, especially in Jenin, where Palestinians say hundreds of civilians have been "massacred" and are now being secretly buried in mass graves. General Powell replied with a "tough and straightforward" 45-minute statement, insisting that Mr Arafat follow his condemnation of terrorism last week by making sure there are no more suicide bombings.

To Mr Sharon, General Powell reiterated US insistence that Israel unambiguously end its incursion into the West Bank.

Today he travels to Beirut and Damascus to try to secure a halt to rocket attacks across Israel's border with Lebanon by the Syrian-backed Hizbollah group.