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Arafat promises

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GAZA CITY: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's cabinet pledged that the year 2000 would see the declaration of an independent Palestinian state, following its last meeting of 1999.

'The year 2000 will see the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," a statement issued by the Palestinian news agency Wafa said after the meeting chaired by Arafat.

The statement called on Israel to respect its commitments and engage seriously in the negotiations on the final status of the Palestinian territories.

It also condemned the continuation of Jewish settlements, particularly in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron, claiming that the Israeli government was doing nothing to prevent it.

Earlier, Arafat promised his people an independent state for the beginning of the next millennium, at a speech marking the 35th anniversary of his Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

"We will celebrate together the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital at the beginning of the next millennium," Arafat told a crowd of at least 20,000 people in Gaza Friday.

"We are strong!" the Palestinian leader said, promising the imminent release of more than 1,600 Palestinians still held by Israel and the "return to Palestine" of the refugees who fled on the creation of the Jewish state in 1948.

Arafat had first lit "the flame of the revolution" at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Gaza and then addressed a surging, cheering crowd.

Fatah's anniversary was also celebrated by parades and public gatherings in Dura in the south of the West Bank, in Ramallah to the north of Jerusalem and in the autonomous Gaza strip.

In Dura, close to 1,000 demonstrators stabbed an effigy mounted on a star of David, the symbol of Israel, before setting it on fire.

Several dozen masked demonstrators fired weapons into the air, as the crowd chanting slogans calling for the release of about 1,600 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.

They also shouted "Death to collaborators" with Israel.

Palestinian police stood by but there were no incidents. Dura, which is southwest of Hebron, is in an area where the Palestinian Authority exercises civilian control but security remains in Israeli hands.

No Israeli soldiers intervened during the march. In Bethlehem, several hundred Fatah supporters marched with torches and Palestinian flags, in front of a crowd of thousands - Palestinians for the most part - who had come to the town to celebrate 2000 years of the Christian era.

The anniversary marks the first attack mounted against Israel by Fatah, the main faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, on January 1, 1965.-AFP