JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - The United States will send its leading Middle East troubleshooter back to the region on Thursday to try to rescue a truce-to-talks plan from 15 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.
The U.S. Embassy in Israel announced Tuesday the return of retired U.S. Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who left the region in mid-December during a storm of bloodletting that drowned out talk of peace.
Israeli government sources said he was likely to stay for about four days.
Despite fresh peacemaking hopes for the new year, a source in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said Sharon had rejected a proposal for President Moshe Katzav to call a year-long truce in a speech to Palestinian legislators.
Underscoring the challenges facing Zinni, Israeli troops, battling a 15-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence, launched brief raids to seize 10 suspected Palestinian militants Tuesday, security sources from both sides said.
Officials on both sides pledged to welcome Zinni back following two weeks of relative calm since Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, under heavy international pressure, called for an end to militant attacks on Israelis.
Zinni will ensure Arafat ``is cracking down on terrorists, dismantling their infrastructure,'' an embassy spokesman told Reuters. If so, Zinni will encourage the Israelis to ease blockades on Palestinian areas, the spokesman added.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said there had been ''a real decrease'' in the number of Palestinian attacks on Israelis over the past several weeks.
But he said: ``We want the Palestinians to...boost their efforts to prevent attacks, interrogate detainees and put prisoners where prisoners belong.''
Israel has said many of the militants Arafat's forces detain are not held in jails. Palestinian officials have said they fear Israel, as it has done in the past, would attack prisons to try to kill militants on its most wanted list.
PHOTO CAPTION:
The United States has decided to send envoy Anthony Zinni back to the Middle East on Thursday in a bid to end more than 15 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence, a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Israel said on Jan. 1, 2002. Zinni left the region on Dec. 16 after a three-week mission marked by a wave of Palestinian Resistance attacks inside Israel and a series of Israeli reprisal strikes. This file photo shows Zinni in Jerusalem on Nov. 27, 2001. (Natalie Behring/Reuters)