Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said Saturday that "nothing has changed on the ground" since a CIA-brokered ceasefire with Israel went into effect earlier this week.
Arafat was speaking at a brief press conference with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan after the two leaders met in the West Bank city of Ramallah, AFP said.
"I informed the secretary general that the situation is very difficult, and that nothing has changed on the ground" since the US-brokered ceasefire formally went into effect on Wednesday afternoon.
"I am sorry to say that Israeli soldiers are not implementing the orders of their political leaders and are carrying out their military activities and aggression. We are disciplined, and we have shown restraint in implementing the ceasefire, and we hope the other side will do the same.
"We asked Mr. Annan that there should be a deployment of international obervers as soon as possible so we can monitor and see on the ground what is and what is not being done," Arafat said.
For his part, Annan repeated his call for urgent action to move forward in the search for peace.
Annan arrived in Ramallah, coming from Beirut. He is due to hold a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
"We need to move ahead very quickly with the peace process; we need to work with the international community to come in with urgent assistance to help the people to rebuild their life, and this has to follow the effective implementation of the Mitchell report," the UN chief said.
"So it is important that we do everything we can to make sure that the ceasefire holds and move forward very quickly with the implementation of all aspects of the Mitchell report."
That report, prepared by a US-led commission studying the causes of nearly nine months of violence, called for an immediate ceasefire, implementation of confidence-building measures and then a return to peace talks.
"I think we have an opportunity, but a fleeting opportunity, to resolve this issue, and we should seize the moment," Annan said.
"If we don't seize it, it may run away from us."
The PA earlier on Saturday repeated accusations that Israel had violated the CIA-brokered ceasefire, denouncing the Israeli army's use of live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets during clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops Friday, in which at least 25 Palestinians were injured.
The statement, cited by Israel Radio, said that Israeli army bulldozers had plowed up Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Seventeen Palestinians were injured by rubber bullets fired by Israeli soldiers in clashes across the West Bank, Palestinian officials said, cited by WAFA news agency.
The clashes erupted during protests near Palestinian towns organized by the Islamic and Nationalist Forces, a coalition of 13 Palestinian movements which includes Fateh and the main Islamist group, Hamas.
The demonstrators gathered to condemn "US pressures" on the Palestinians to accept the ceasefire plan and oppose any security cooperation with Israel, while at the same time stressing the need to continue the Palestinian uprising, or Intifada.
In Ramallah, some 1,000 Palestinians torched the US flag, after which clashes erupted on the edge of the town. Seven Palestinians were injured, while an independent Japanese journalist was slightly hurt by shots fired by Israeli soldiers, said the agency.
Protests were also staged by thousands of Palestinians in the towns of Nablus, Tulkarem and Hebron, where one Palestinian was injured, as well as in Halhul near Hebron, where another three were hurt.
Six more Palestinians were wounded in clashes with the Israeli army in Al Khader near the southern city of Bethlehem, said WAFA.
AFP said that the Israeli army arrested six Israeli leftists there, after they protested against Jewish settlers who had set up four caravans on Palestinian land.
In the Gaza Strip, eight Palestinians were also injured during clashes with the army, hospital sources said, cited by AFP.
Among the injured were two children, aged 10 and 12.
An 18-year-old Palestinian was seriously injured when he was shot in the chest near the Khan Yunis refugee camp, which faces the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim.
Three other Palestinians were injured near Gaza City, by the Karni crossing point, AFP added.
A high-ranking Palestinian security official, meanwhile, accused the Israeli army of having blocked the convoy of the head of public security, Abdelrazak Al Majaida, near the Gush Katif bloc, AFP said.
The vehicles were then allowed to move on, the official said, accusing the Israelis, however, of not having respected a commitment they made on Thursday during an Israeli-Palestinian security meeting to facilitate the movements of Palestinian security officials.
In occupied Jerusalem, Palestinian security officials at a joint security meeting held Friday rejected the Israeli demand that they arrest Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists, Israel Radio reported, cited by Haaretz newspaper.
The three-way security meeting was attended by Israel and the Palestinians as well as CIA representatives.
The Palestinians said that they would not carry out any arrests, because Israel was not carrying out its obligations as defined in the ceasefire plan presented earlier in the week by CIA chief George Tenet.
Israeli representatives also presented the Palestinians with a list of "every violent" incident that had occurred in the last 48 hours, since the ceasefire was supposed to come into effect.
According to the radio, Israel repeated its statement that the incidents ran contrary to the understandings put forward by Tenet.
One senior Palestinian security official said the next trilateral meeting would take place on Sunday.
Sharon held a meeting earlier Friday with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Finance Minister Silvan Shalom, Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy and the head of the Shin Bet Security Service, Avi Dichter, to prepare for the joint meeting, said the radio.
After the meeting, it was announced that Israel would continue to ease the closures on the Palestinian territories, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement brokered by Tenet.
Since the outbreak of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict last September, Reuters reports that Palestinians have killed approximately 88 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. The latest suicide bombing raises that toll by at least 20. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to CNN, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 450 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s. The most recent Israeli tank attack raises that death toll to at least 453.
According to Amnesty International, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children.
In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is "arguably the most important intellectual alive," has been quoted as saying: "State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it." - Albawaba.com
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