OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Independent: Powell asks Arafat to help stop killing

Washington turned to Yasser Arafat yesterday, a man it had sought to marginalise and sideline for months, to help the so-called Middle East road-map after the Jerusalem bus bombing and Israel's killing of a senior Hamas leader threatened to wreck the peace plan.

Months after the United States demanded that the Palestinians elect a Prime Minister in an effort to reduce the authority of Mr Arafat, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, asked him yesterday to help stop the cycle of violence.

His appeal to the Palestinian Authority's chairman was an admission of the influence that Mr Arafat still wields and the inability of the Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to stop Palestinian attacks.