Arafat, under pressure at home and abroad to make sweeping reforms, had planned to use yesterday’s meeting of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in the West Bank city of Ramallah to announce and win parliamentary approval for his new Cabinet.

But the session was put off after lawmakers and a Cabinet minister were stopped at a Gaza Strip checkpoint.

"There is no (PLC) meeting today because Israel has prevented 13 Gaza deputies from attending the session in Ramallah," a senior Palestinian official said. "We hold Israel responsible for trying to sabotage our reform effort."

Ibrahim Abu Al-Naja, deputy speaker of the PLC, told Reuters in Gaza that Israel had backtracked on a promise to let all 85 lawmakers reach Ramallah.

In Tulkarm, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by machine gun fire from an Israeli tank yesterday as youths stoned an army column during curfew, Palestinian security officials said.

Ahmed Ombus, 16, was killed at the entrance to the Tulkarm refugee camp.

The army reported that an unidentified Palestinian man had been shot dead while trying to plant explosives strapped to a gas canister by a road in Tulkarm.

In Jenin, Israeli troops early yesterday destroyed the homes of four Palestinians.

The soldiers dynamited and bulldozed the house of Alis Afouri, a local leader of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed branch of Islamic Jihad movement, and the home of Abdel Karim Awes, an official of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.

The third house to be razed was that of Mohammed Hassanein, a member of the Al-Quds Brigades and one of the two attackers who used a car bomb to destroy an Israeli bus on Oct. 21 killing 14 Israelis.

Israeli public radio said that the house of Hassanein’s companion, Ashraf Al-Asmar, 17, was also torn down by the army.

More than 50 houses have been razed since August. Human rights organizations have hit out at the policy as "collective punishment."

In another development, a home-made Palestinian rocket landed near the southern Israeli town of Sderot yesterday, the Israeli Army spokesman’s office said.

Meanwhile, Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon said yesterday that Israel accepts the principles of the latest United States peace initiative, but will not agree to a complete freeze in settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

An Arab Israeli lawmaker was physically thrown out of Israel’s Parliament yesterday for branding the government as "bloodthirsty". Communist MP Mohammed Barake, denouncing military operations in the Palestinian territories, called Prime Minister Ariel Sharon the "leader of a bloodthirsty government," public radio reported.

While Blix carefully avoided taking sides in the discussion between the United States and its opponents in the council, he did say it was helpful to warn Iraq that there would be consequences if it failed to cooperate. "We stressed the importance of having agreement and broad unity in the council," Blix told reporters as he emerged from consultations which lasted almost three hours.

The discussions, which also involved Mohammed El-Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), centered on a US draft resolution which would give the inspectors wider powers.

Blix said the intention in the draft was to give "very clear signals" to Iraq and to avoid the kind of "cat-and-mouse play" that plagued inspectors between 1991 and 1998, when they were withdrawn the last time.

"It helps us if Iraq is conscious that non-cooperation will entail reactions by the council," he added.

Earlier, the UN Security Council met with Blix, in a bid to bridge differences over the US draft resolution.

Ahead of the meeting in New York, officials in the capitals of some key council members ratcheted up the pressure at the start of what is expected to be make-or-break week in the council.

The White House, meanwhile, said the United Nations must now vote on a resolution. "The United Nations has debated this now long enough. The time has come for people to raise their hands and cast their votes," President George W. Bush’s spokesman, Ari Fleischer, told reporters.

In London, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair also said the time was close when a vote would have to be taken on the US draft, which would strengthen the inspectors’ powers.

Britain is alone among the four other permanent council members in giving wholehearted support to the US draft resolution.

Blair’s spokesman noted that the permanent members had been discussing the proposals since mid-September, and said that after addressing people’s concerns, "you come to a point where decisions have to be made." He added: "I think we are at or near that point."

But in Paris, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin challenged the bid by the United States to push through a resolution that would give it a green light for military action in Iraq.

"There can’t be collective action and unilateral action at the same time. A choice has to be made," he told reporters.

De Villepin warned Saturday that France, which had already distributed a text last week with extensive rewording of the US draft, would put forward its own proposal if no accord is reached. The two other permanent members, Russia and China, have sided with France.

An unidentified assailant shot the official, named by diplomats as Lawrence (Larry) Foley, a senior administrator at the US Agency for International Development, USAID, at 7:30 a.m. (0530 GMT) as Foley was leaving for work, security officials said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the murder.

The killing of the 62-year-old official came at a time of rising anti-American sentiment in the region amid US bias toward Israel and Washington’s threatened military campaign against Iraq.

A month ago the US Embassy in Jordan warned Americans of a report that a member of the Al-Qaeda network had plans to kidnap Americans in Jordan earlier this year.

A Jordanian security source said Foley was shot at close range before the assailant and possible accomplices fled the scene in an affluent area of the capital Amman.

"One assailant or more was behind the criminal shooting and investigations are continuing to reveal the culprits," the security official told Reuters.

Foley’s wife immediately notified security officials who rushed to the scene and cordoned off the area. A witness said Foley’s body was lying near his car in the garage of his two-story villa after the shooting.

"The body of the old man was lying there, with blood near the driver’s door of his Mercedes car that was parked in his indoor garage," he said.

Jordanian officials expressed shock and indignation at the assassination, the first killing of a Western diplomat in the security-conscious country.

"This attack, regardless of its motives, is an attack on the country and its national security," Petra state news agency quoted Information Minister Mohammad Adwan as saying.

Later Adwan told reporters that progress was being made by investigators in the case but it was premature to speculate about who was behind the killing.

"It’s an isolated incident...it’s very unfortunate that the American diplomat passed away. We are sure whoever has done it is targeting not only the US but Jordan also," Adwan added.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher visited the US Embassy to express condolences and told Petra the authorities would act firmly and bring the culprits to justice soon.

The assassination was an affront to tough security measures in the kingdom, which have included arrests of scores of Iraqi nationals without residency status as part of contingency plans before a possible US assault on Iraq, officials privately say.

Security was tightened further at the US Embassy in the Abdoun district of the capital and at other Western embassies in the country, according to diplomats.

US Ambassador Edward Gnehm told a press conference in Amman later yesterday that the United States "will not rest" until those behind the murder of the American diplomat are found.

"We are working closely with the Jordanian authorities to apprehend the person or persons responsible for this crime and we will not rest until they are found," Gnehm said.

Saying "we are all simply devastated", Gnehm denounced the killing as a "heinous and cowardly act" and said that he had received a call of condolences from King Abdallah.

"We are outraged by this incomprehensible act. There can be no possible explanation for a heinous act of this kind.

"The cowardly criminal act that took away Larry’s life today took away something from within us all and we will not allow the life of such a great and peaceful man to be defiled by an act so evil, so cowardly."

SLEPTSOVSK, Russia, 29 October — Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov warned Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday that more attacks like the bloody Moscow hostage siege were inevitable unless he seeks a peace settlement.

"There is no military solution," he said in a telephone interview with AFP as Putin vowed no deal with "terrorists", while his officials dodged questions about a lethal mystery gas used to end the Moscow theater siege.

"You will never be able to crush the Chechen people and bring them to their knees. There is one reasonable, correct step — to sit down at the negotiating table.

"All the rest is death, blood, hostages and the death of absolutely innocent people," added Maskhadov, in his first public statement since Chechen rebels seized more than 700 people in the theater last week.

The president of the breakaway republic firmly denied any involvement in the hostage-taking.

"We condemn and have always condemned such actions and they cannot be justified. We have always striven to conduct ourselves honorably in our fight for national liberation," he said.

"Ordinary people, both here and there, are not guilty," added Maskhadov.

In Moscow, Russian officials denied the use of "sarin or other poison gases" to neutralize Chechen rebels, but refused to give precise details.

The purpose of the special forces raid on the Moscow theater Saturday "was not to kill everyone, and so the use of sarin or any other poison gas can be ruled out," the Russian presidency’s top medical official Viktor Fominykh told reporters.

"Consequently, it is not essential to know its composition exactly in order to provide treatment," Fominykh said.

He said he had "no objective information" about the nature of the gas pumped into the theater to neutralize the 50-strong Chechen commando group.

Countries whose nationals were among the hostages, including the United States and Germany, have asked for information regarding the gas but have been met with silence.

Doctors speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that the rescued hostages were being treated with naxalone, a product used for the treatment of secondary respiratory ailments.

Naxalone is commonly used in post-anesthesia operations and in the treatment of after-effects of morphine and alcohol intake.

The drug was injected into the bodies of hostages lying asleep inside the theater in the immediate aftermath of the special forces attack, one doctor said.

Presenting a paper at the first conference of the Arab Thought Foundation, the Saudi official said developed countries were driven by vested interests and ambitions. "These countries falsely claim that they support the developing countries to achieve progress and stability," the Shoura chief said presenting a paper on "Shoura and democracy: A modern viewpoint."

He said some countries, which call themselves as the citadel of freedom, democracy and human rights, violate these slogans by supporting autocratic and oppressive regimes and triggering conflicts and coupes.

Humaid said Shoura in Islam was meant by exchange of views by experts to take the right decision. He explained the differences between Shoura and Western democracy. "Shoura is a form of public participation in governance," he pointed out.

He said the Shoura Council in the Kingdom studies all rules and regulations, monitors performances of government departments and discusses state plans.

Earlier Hazem al-Beblawi, an Egyptian university professor and consultant for the International Monetary Fund, said the lack of political unity among Arab countries will have a serious knock-on effect on their economies.

"There is an Arab nation, a culture and a common history, but there is no Arab economy, only entities which are not linked economically," he told the conference.

Trade between Arab states amounts to only eight percent of the total volume of business in the Arab world, he said.

"There is no agreement among those who control the political destinies of these countries on the fact that economic integration is useful to the Arab nation," he said.

However, he stressed Arab countries would have to accept the political costs for improving their economic cooperation, including relaxing control over borders.

Ahmad Juweili, head of the Arab Economic Council, linked to the Arab League, agreed that political factors and instability were major factors in making the region one of the least economically integrated in the world.

But he also said weaknesses in the private sector were to blame, citing a lack of will for European Union-style integration. He noted that a 1996 decision at a Cairo summit to forge ahead with a regional free trade zone by 2007 is actually a project that has been "left sitting in the drawer since 1981."

The Arab world attracts less than one percent of international investments, oil represents 70 percent of Arab exports, and the region imports almost all its other needs.

The Saudi delegation, representing 43 companies and including government officials, will be the first to cross the border after the reopening to attend a major trade fair in Baghdad.

Organized by the Saudi Exports Center, the team will include Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Zamil, chairman of the center and a member of the Shoura Council, and Dr. Fahd Al-Sultan, secretary-general of the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Iraq announced yesterday that it would reopen the border post later this week to allow goods into the country under the United Nations oil-for-food program. The move is one of several signs that Baghdad wants to improve its relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh told a satellite TV channel that the crossing at Arar would open on Thursday after being closed since 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, triggering the Gulf war.

"The crossing at Arar will be open on Thursday and a 100-strong Saudi delegation of businessmen and representatives of Saudi firms will cross into the country to attend the Baghdad fair," Saleh said.

"The move will be a step toward upgrading trade ties between Iraq and Saudi Arabia," the minister added.

According to Iraqi sources, 43 major Saudi firms plan to take part in a major international trade fair, which opens in Baghdad on Nov. 1.

"Saudi Arabia’s exports, now sent indirectly through neighboring countries, will now go directly into Iraq when the crossing at Arar is reopened," Saleh said.

The crossing , 340 km southwest of Baghdad, was a major conduit for goods in and out Iraq before the Gulf war.

Saudi Arabia asked Iraq to reopen the crossing in October, 2000, and Baghdad gave its approval last June.

Five years ago there was no trade between Saudi Arabia and Iraq, but trade is expected to reach $1 billion in 2002.