JERUSALEM: Israel's foreign minister said its security cabinet, summoned for an emergency session yesterday after two suicide bombings, should ignore US objections and expel Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

"We are now in a situation that if we ask for such permission (from Washington), it will be virtually impossible to get it," Silvan Shalom told Army Radio.

Signalling a possible intention to tighten its encirclement of Arafat, the Israeli army commandeered a Palestinian Authority building overlooking his compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The 74-year-old leader, effectively confined for the past two years by Israeli military roadblocks around his battered headquarters, known as the Muqata, had denied US and Israeli allegations he encourages violence.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, cutting short a trip to India, prepared to consult his security cabinet on further military steps against Palestinian militants.

Amid the violence, the Palestine Liberation Organization's policy-making executive committee met yesterday to discuss candidates for a scaled-down "crisis cabinet."

Agencies via Xinhua

(China Daily 09/12/2003 page1)