Israel said on Sunday it was ready to hand over control of several West Bank towns to the Palestinians within days, further fuelling hopes of a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process. The announcement came ahead of a first summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and new Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas which Israel's public radio said had been lined up for February 8.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is due to travel to the region next month to help push the process forward, said she saw a "time of opportunity" and promised to play an active role.
"The transfer of control of some towns in the West Bank should take place in the next few days," Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz told Israeli radio a day after meeting with former Palestinian security minister Mohammad Dahlan.
"We are finalising the details on the choice of towns and an exact date for their transfer," he added.
A senior Palestinian security source told AFP that his forces were preparing to move in to place as early as Wednesday.
The agreement is said to cover Ramallah, Qalqiliya, Tulkarem, Jericho and possibly Bethlehem in the south.
The transfer of control in Ramallah would be of major symbolic importance, as it now serves as the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.
Israel's willingness to hand over control in swathes of the West Bank comes after more than 4,000 Palestinian troops took up positions across Gaza with orders to prevent militant rocket attacks.
Praising the relative quiet which has descended on the Palestinian territories, Mofaz told the cabinet Sunday that there had been a 75 percent drop in the number of attacks in the past few days, army radio reported.
In Gaza City, prime minister Ahmed Qorei met militant leaders as the Palestinian leadership pressed efforts to secure a formal truce.
Abbas has already secured an unofficial "cooling down" period but wants Israel to reciprocate by ending military operations and starting to release Palestinian prisoners so that he can cement a full cease-fire.
Israel's official position is that any truce is an internal matter for the Palestinians, but it has been moving towards meeting some of Abbas's demands.
In the past few days, officials have ordered an end to raids in Gaza and a severe curtailment of lethal operations against militants as well as making positive noises about releasing significant numbers of prisoners.
An announcement on prisoners is expected to follow the Abbas-Sharon summit, which an Israeli official said would take place during the week starting February 6. Until now, no specific date had been set, he added.
Abbas met Sharon during his tenure as premier in 2003, but the proposed summit would be the first top-level Israeli-Palestinian meeting in more than four years.
The summit is expected to coincide with Rice's visit which is scheduled to start around February 6.
"I plan to go out to discuss with them, to look at what we can do," the US secretary of state said Sunday.
"The conditions are now emerging for movement back onto the road map and for movement toward a two-state solution," she said. "And I intend to do everything that I can to help push that process forward.
Abbas is currently in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin whose government is one of the four sponsors of the roadmap peace plan with the United States, the European Union and the United Nations.
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