Palestinian accuses US of 'blackmailing'

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A senior Palestinian security official and top aide to leader Yasser Arafat accused the United States yesterday of "blackmailing" the Palestinian Authority over its failure to arrest and prosecute those responsible for the October killing of three American security guards in the Gaza Strip.

Brigadier General Jibril Rajoub, Arafat's national security adviser, said in a news conference with foreign reporters that the US Embassy had stopped sending diplomats and other embassy personnel into the Gaza Strip and West Bank because the Palestinians had not solved the case. Afterward, he said his remarks also referred to a threatened cutoff of US funding to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority -- amounting to roughly $200 million a year -- because so little progress was being made in the investigation.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the threat had been made on several occasions.

"The Americans stopped their involvement, waiting for the results of the investigation. I think that's blackmailing," Rajoub said during the meeting with reporters. "Americans are using this isolated case in order either to not be involved [in efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] or to blackmail the Palestinian people."

A US official in Tel Aviv said embassy workers were prohibited from traveling in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since October "because we have security concerns. We don't want to put our people at risk." He added: "With respect to the investigation, there has been cooperation and progress, but we'd like to see more."

The Oct. 15 attack occurred when a buried roadside bomb was detonated underneath a Chevrolet Suburban carrying American security guards who were escorting a US diplomat traveling in another vehicle. Three of the guards were killed, and one was seriously injured. US officials said the guards worked for DynCorp, a private security contractor from Reston, Va. They said the diplomat was visiting Gaza to interview Palestinian academics who had applied for Fulbright scholarships.

Senior Palestinian officials say that the dead men were CIA officers who were traveling to Gaza to monitor Palestinian compliance with a US-backed peace initiative called the road map. That plan has since collapsed.

After the bombing, US, Israeli, and Palestinian officials were unanimous in their conclusions that the attackers knew that the convoy was carrying Americans and had deliberately targeted them. It was the first time in the three-year Palestinian uprising that workers from the US Embassy were singled out for attack.

Immediately after the attack, Palestinian security officers arrested several members of the Popular Resistance Committees, a loose-knit group of disaffected former members of larger Palestinian militant groups, principally the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the military wing of Arafat's Fatah political movement.

In interviews with The Washington Post, leaders of the group have denied that their members were involved in the attack. At least three members of the organization remain in the custody of Palestinian security forces.