Palestinian officials consider acting solo

By The Associated Press

	Yasser Abed Rabbo
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RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian leaders are considering whether to unilaterally declare a state as a response to Israeli threats of go-it-alone partition measures, a senior official said yesterday.

The United States has discouraged previous Palestinian threats to declare a state, saying it supports Palestinian statehood only through negotiations with Israel. Most European countries have taken a similar stance.

Israel said the announcement would do nothing to help negotiations on a U.S.-backed peace "road map."

The Palestinian official, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said declaring a state was being considered as an option in reaction to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's pledge to enact a unilateral "disengagement plan" if peace talks fail. Sharon has made clear his strategy would leave Palestinians less land than they want for a state.

Abed Rabbo said the Palestinians could declare a state on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war — the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem — and then request international legal recognition of their authority.

The Palestinians were granted self-rule in much of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank in the mid-1990s under the Oslo peace accords. But Palestinian autonomy has been severely eroded during a more than 3-year-old uprising marked by Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli army raids.

In related developments:

• Prime Minister Sharon successfully underwent an operation to remove kidney stones yesterday at a Tel Aviv hospital. A statement said the procedure was "routine" and "ended successfully" and Sharon, 75, would be sent home to rest in a few hours.

• Two Palestinian militants died in incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Ahmed Mahdi Awad, 22, a member of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed yesterday in a shootout with Israeli troops near the Jewish settlement of Kadim, outside the West Bank city of Jenin. In the Gaza Strip, Khalil Bawadi, 23, a Hamas member, died late Sunday while allegedly detonating an explosive charge as an Israeli military jeep passed by. Witnesses said he was shot, but Israeli officials said no shots were fired.

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