Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News

JERUSALEM, 24 April 2004 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday he was no longer bound by a pledge he gave US President George W. Bush not to harm Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

“I said during our first meeting about three years ago that I accepted his request not to harm Arafat physically,” Sharon told Channel Two. “But I am released from this commitment. I release myself from this commitment regarding Arafat,” he said.

The White House bluntly told Israel Sharon must abide by the past pledge. A senior Bush administration official said: “We consider a pledge, a pledge.”

Sharon’s threat to Arafat came as Israeli commandos assassinated three Fatah members in the West Bank as Palestinians freed men implicated in the killing of US security guards.

Witnesses said Israeli commandos in an unmarked car ambushed the four in Qalqilya, killing three and wounding the fourth.

The army said all four men belonged to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah, and that the military unit fired after they ignored orders to halt and tried to flee.

But a senior Al-Aqsa official said only one of the dead belonged to the group while the other two were Fatah political activists. The wounded man was identified as Al-Aqsa’s leader in Qalqilya. “We will retaliate,” the Al-Aqsa official said.

In the West Bank village of Tallouza, near Nablus, a Palestinian university lecturer was killed at his home when he was caught in a crossfire between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters at a house next door, witnesses said.

In Gaza City, Palestinian fighters stormed a police station and released three men with possible links to a bombing of a US diplomatic convoy, an American official said.

A fourth man refused to leave with the three, saying he was waiting to be formally released by Palestinian authorities in accordance with a March decision by a Palestinian court.

“We succeeded in freeing three of our brothers,” Abu Abir, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, said. He said the incident took place Tuesday.

— Additional input from agencies