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Powell: Israel to aid Palestinian vote

JERUSALEM - Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that he won Israel's agreement to permit freedom of movement for Palestinians when they hold elections for a successor to Yasser Arafat in January.

Powell, in his final trip to a region where his efforts to move the peace process forward were repeatedly frustrated, said he was pleased with the renewed "level of coordination and cooperation" between Israelis and Palestinians in recent days.

"The Israeli authorities said to me ... they will do everything that they can to permit freedom of movement and access for candidates as well as for voters on election day, and both sides seem confident that they'll be able to work out a solution," Powell told reporters during a stop in the West Bank city of Jericho to visit a voter registration station.

Israeli and Palestinian officials will meet soon to discuss the specifics of Palestinian needs to facilitate the election of a Palestinian Authority president on Jan. 9, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told a parliamentary security committee Monday. U.S. officials have said they hope the vote will be a turning point for the stalled peace process known as the road map.

Powell said he had also won agreement from Israel to find a way to allow Palestinians living in East Jerusalem to vote. Israeli officials, who initially had ruled out permitting residents of the Israeli-annexed, Palestinian-populated area to participate in the election, now say East Jerusalemites will be allowed to cast absentee ballots which can be counted in the election.

JERUSALEM - The most important decision about who will run for president of the Palestinian Authority was made Monday by the 15 members of the Fatah movement's Central Committee, who nominated former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, 69, as Fatah's presidential candidate for the Jan. 9 election.

The unanimous choice by the Central Committee members - almost all in their sixties and seventies, and all elected to their posts 15 years ago - was an emphatic declaration by the so-called old guard of Fatah, the political organization founded by Yasser Arafat more than 40 years ago, not to turn over the leadership reins to a younger generation agitating for power.

JERUSALEM - Military prosecutors on Monday charged an army captain with five separate offenses after fellow soldiers accused him of repeatedly shooting a 13-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl to make sure that she was dead. The girl, Iman al-Hams, was killed in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 5 as she approached an Israeli military outpost.

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