Powell asks Arafat to help stop killing

Washington turned to Yasser Arafat yesterday, a man it had sought to marginalise and sideline for months, to help the so-called Middle East road-map after the Jerusalem bus bombing and Israel's killing of a senior Hamas leader threatened to wreck the peace plan.

Months after the United States demanded that the Palestinians elect a Prime Minister in an effort to reduce the authority of Mr Arafat, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, asked him yesterday to help stop the cycle of violence.

His appeal to the Palestinian Authority's chairman was an admission of the influence that Mr Arafat still wields and the inability of the Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to stop Palestinian attacks.

"The end of the road-map is a cliff that both sides will fall off," General Powell said at the UN headquarters in New York. "I call on Chairman Arafat to work with Prime Minister Abbas and to make available to Prime Minister Abbas those security elements under his control so they can allow progress to be made on the road-map. End terror, end this violence that just results in the further repetition of the cycle that we've seen so often."

He added: "The alternative is what? Just more death and destruction? Let the terrorists win, let those who have no interest in a Palestinian state win, let those who have no interest but killing innocent people win?

"No. That is not an acceptable outcome. Both parties realise it and I think both sides should recommit themselves to finding a way forward."

The State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said authority over Palestinian security organisations was still divided between Mr Arafat and Abu Mazen and said it needed to be firmly in the Prime Minister's hands.

The militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility for the bus blast. Israel, in what it said was a response to the bombing, killed a senior Hamas political leader, Ismail Abu Shanab, in a missile attack. Israeli troops also raided the West Bank towns of Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarem in search of militants and in Hebron, troops blew up the home of the bus bomber.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they were ending the eight-week truce and vowed further attacks. Mr Arafat, confined to his Ramallah headquarters for months, has not yet replied to General Powell.