Israeli forces swooped on a militant bastion in the West Bank on Tuesday after security talks with Palestinians designed to push ahead a US-backed "road map" peace plan broke off inconclusively.

A Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant holds his rifle as he walks past a picture of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during the funerals of Faker el-Zaaneen, Mohammed Abo Hamdan, Kaldon el-Shompate and Roshdi el-Zaneen, in Gaza city, Monday June 23, 2003. [Reuters]

Palestinian witnesses said troops closed off Nablus city's Casbah under the cover of darkness after clashing with gunmen. There were no reports of casualties. The army said it sought locals wanted for carrying out suicide bombings and other attacks.

The Palestinian Authority says such actions against a 32-month-old uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip undermine its efforts to secure a truce with militants, a significant step toward statehood by 2005 as envisioned by the road map.

But Israel insists it reserves the right to act pending proof the Palestinians can rein in groups led by Hamas, an Islamic group committed to the Jewish state's destruction.

In the latest round of security talks on Monday, Israeli Major-General Amos Gilad and Palestinian Minister for Security Affairs Mohammed Dahlan discussed a U.S.-proposed deal whereby Israeli troops would withdraw from Gaza areas and the West Bank city of Bethlehem in exchange for a Palestinian undertaking to quell militant activity there.

The talks adjourned after the Palestinians demanded Israeli military measures be curtailed further. Among their demands is an end to Israel's targeted killing of leading militants, free passage for Palestinian traffic on Gaza's main highway, and the release of thousands of Palestinian detainees.

"Israel has to realize that only by backing off can it give us the space we need to secure a 'hudna'," a Palestinian official told Reuters, using the Arabic term for a truce.

A senior Israeli source noted that the areas proposed for handover were intended as test cases for future deals. "Let the Palestinians get their hudna, then we'll talk," the source said.

POWELL UPBEAT, RICE EN ROUTE

Secretary of State Colin Powell sounded an optimistic note on the road map's prospects.

"I know the Palestinian Authority is hard at work trying to bring into place a cessation of violence on the part of (militants)," Powell said at the World Economic Forum in Jordan.

U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice  will visit the region for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Saturday and Sunday, the White House said.

The road map, affirmed by President Bush at a June 4 summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, calls for an end to violence and the evacuation of some Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank to make way for a Palestinian state by 2005.

A flareup of violence which greeted the plan upon its launch has shown no sign of abating.

On Saturday, Israeli special forces killed a Hamas commander in the West Bank city of Hebron, drawing vows of revenge. On Monday, four militants died in a Gaza blast that some witnesses attributed to Israeli tank fire, but others described as the premature detonation of a bomb they were planting.

Abbas has ruled out a crackdown on militants as a recipe for civil war. Yet Israeli officials are skeptical at the Palestinian truce talks, saying they could fuel more fighting.

"No hope should be put in this 'hudna'," Gilad told Israel Radio. "As far as Hamas is concerned, the 'hudna' is a cease-fire for the purpose of reorganization, so that it can carry out even harsher acts of murder."

But neither is Israel free of infighting. On Monday, hundreds of rabbis representing much of the country's right-wing issued a resolution against government evacuations of settler outposts, saying this violated a "biblical prohibition."

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