960427

Arafat hails

Lebanon truce as

halting "aggression"

GAZA: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat welcomed on Saturday the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon as "a very important agreement" to halt what he called Israel's aggression against Palestinians and Lebanese there.

A senior Palestinian peace negotiator said the ceasefire could spark progress in Israel's sluggish negotiations with Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians.

Arafat spoke as the first of a half-million displaced Lebanese villagers streamed homeward on Saturday, hours after guns fell silent across south Lebanon in the pre-dawn truce.

The ceasefire accord, concluded on Friday, ended a 16-day Israeli air, artillery and sea onslaught that killed some 200 people, mostly civilians.

"This is a very important agreement," Arafat told reporters. "This will be a very good opportunity for our brothers in Lebanon -- Palestinians and Lebanese -- not to face any troubles from the Israeli raids."

Thousands of Palestinian refugees reside in Lebanon.

Arafat, long under fire from Palestinian militants for his peace moves with the Jewish state, had condemned the offensive, launched in retaliation for Hizbollah rocket attacks against northern Israel.

Asked if the ceasefire, forged in round-the-clock shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, would stop Israel's "Operation Grapes of Wrath," Arafat said:

"The most important thing is we want to stop the aggression against the Palestinian and Lebanese people in the south of Lebanon."

Nabil Shaath, head of planning for Arafat's Palestinian Authority and an architect of the accords that led to self-rule in much of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, said the ceasefire was a "good omen" for Israeli-Palestinian "final status" talks scheduled to begin early next month.

Shaath said he hoped the truce would also lead to a resumption of negotiations between Syria and Israel and between Lebanon and Israel.

Years of talks with Damascus and Lebanon have bogged down over the timing and scope of a future Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, captured by the Jewish state in the 1967 Middle East war.

The forthcoming Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are to tackle issues at the heart of the Middle East conflict, including the fate of Arab East Jerusalem -- also captured in 1967 and claimed by Israel as its capital -- and of Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.-Reuter