Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei said Monday that Israel's continued "aggression" in the occupied territories was blowing the chance of his holding a long-awaited meeting with Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon.
"The raids, the aggression and the incursions continue and I do not think that in such a context the meeting (with Sharon) will bring the results that we hope for," Qorei told reporters in Gaza City after a cabinet meeting.
"We are not against the holding of such a meeting but we want it to lead to the alleviation of the suffering of our people and open the political perspectives for a just settlement.
"We don't want a meeting simply to pose in front of the cameras," he added.
Top-level talks between the Israelis and Palestinians have been frozen since August.
Both sides have said they are in favour of a first meeting between the two prime ministers since Qorei succeeded Mahmud Abbas in September, but the summit has been repeatedly pushed back.
A meeting between senior aides to Sharon and Qorei was called off by the Palestinians last month in protest at a deadly Israeli army raid in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
"We are not in favour of a unilateral truce or cease-fire. We are for a reciprocal cease-fire" which should be negotiated between the Israeli and Palestinian governments.
Sharon faces mutiny within Likud party
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faces the sound and fury of his Likud party's most die-hard right-wingers on Monday at a convention likely to challenge his policies towards the Palestinians.
Sharon has long sneered at opposition from within Likud's 3,000-strong Central Committee, a bastion of support for his strongest party rival, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as signifying nothing. Likud's rank-and-file elect party leaders.
ISRAELI TROOPS KILL PALESTINIAN TEENAGER: Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager who was throwing stones at them in a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday, medics said.
The shooting came two days after Israeli soldiers killed four Palestinians in Nablus during some of the bloodiest confrontations there for at least two weeks.
In Monday's clash, witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire on a group of Palestinians throwing stones at them in the El Ayn refugee camp. A 17-year-old teenager was shot dead and a 14-year-old was wounded and taken to a local hospital.
The army said it was checking the report.