JENIN, West Bank, 11 March 2004 — A new round of international diplomacy was overshadowed as the Israeli Army staged its deadliest West Bank raid in months yesterday, killing five Palestinians. The latest bloodshed came amid conflicting signals on whether Israeli and Palestinian leaders were preparing to meet next week in their first summit in eight months.

Troops operating undercover shot dead five members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed faction in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, in an ambush in the town of Jenin, witnesses said. Israeli officials said the gunmen had been on the way to attack a nearby Jewish settlement.

Israeli political sources said earlier yesterday that talks between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qorei, already delayed several times because of violence, had been tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday.

But Qorei, during a visit to Oslo, denied a date had been set for a summit with Sharon, though he said such a meeting would take place if preparatory talks were successful.

“It is premature to talk about any dates,” Qorei said after a speech at the Nobel Institute.

Underlining a possible new diplomatic push to stem the conflict, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini had emerged earlier from Cairo talks to announce that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had persuaded the sides to meet on March 16.

Sources close to Sharon say the right-wing prime minister wants to hold talks to smooth the way for a White House meeting expected in late March or early April when he will present his unilateral plan to remove Jewish settlements from Gaza.

US envoys were due to visit Israel today to sound out Sharon on the details of his controversial initiative. Washington has warmed to Sharon’s plan but wants assurances it will not mean abandonment of a US-backed peace road map. “The Americans will want answers to their questions, and Sharon will have to make up his mind what to tell them,” a Sharon confidant said.

Much of the recent bloodshed has been concentrated in Gaza, where the army and militants appear to be positioning themselves to each claim any pullout as a victory. A botched suicide bombing and an army raid left 20 Palestinians dead last weekend.

But violence flared in the West Bank yesterday. Israeli military sources said soldiers engaged in a gunbattle with a carload of gunmen on their way to attack Jewish settlers.

Sharon’s Gaza plan was expected to figure prominently in any summit between Sharon and Qorei. It would be the first such meeting since Sharon met Qorei’s predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas, in July in Jerusalem after both endorsed a US-backed peace road map. The plan has since been derailed by violence. Palestinians fear that by pursuing disengagement Israel is seeking to trade Gaza for permanent control over large parts of the West Bank with its larger settlements, effectively depriving them of land they want for a state.

Asked what he hoped to achieve at a summit, Qorei told reporters in Oslo: “We expect it to be able to put an end to the aggression (against) our people.”

Amid heightened diplomatic activity, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman met Arafat at his West Bank compound two days after holding talks with Sharon on the Gaza pullout plan.

— Additional input from agencies