Israel on Sunday accused militants from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement of trying to ambush Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's convoy in the West Bank last summer.
Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's domestic Shin Beth security service, gave details of the August 6 plot during a weekly meeting of the Israeli cabinet, a senior government official present at the meeting told AFP.
"On August 6, while Prime Minister Olmert was travelling to Jericho to meet Abu Mazen (Abbas), Fatah terrorists tried attacking his convoy," the official said, quoting Diskin.
"The terror plot was thwarted and the meeting was held as planned," the official added. The news came as Olmert prepared to embark on a trip to France and Britain to discuss preparations for an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference expected to be held next month.
"We feel great displeasure over this issue and we will not ignore it. But I do not have any intention to stop the negotiation efforts with the Palestinians," Olmert told reporters before his departure.
"What bothered us was the unacceptable way they dealt with the suspects. This is part of a behaviour pattern that has to change," he added. A senior security official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity said the operation-envisioned as a shooting ambush-was planned by a five-person cell, including members of security forces loyal to Abbas.
"It was a cell of five members. Three of them were arrested by Palestinian security services and released on September 26. The other two were arrested by Israeli security forces in an operation in Jericho," the official said.
"The members of the cell were members of the Palestinian security forces, including the 17 Force," an elite force under the direct authority of Abbas, the official added.
A spokesman for the Palestinian interior ministry, however, denied there was ever a plot, insisting that the three suspects had merely talked about targeting the convoy. "We received information that there was a cell forming in Jericho to carry out subversive operations" and arrested three suspects, the spokesman told AFP.
"We released the three suspects on September 25 after our investigation revealed that the group had no weapons or plans or explosives. "All that we established was that there was talk among those young men-that did not constitute a plan-to attack Olmert's convoy with a Molotov cocktail, but nothing came of those talks." Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is acting prime minister in Olmert's absence, said her government had informed both US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Abbas about the plot and the release of the suspects.
"We are taking this planned attack very seriously and are strongly protesting. We have informed Rice and the Palestinians," Livni said, according to Ynetnews. Olmert and Abbas have been struggling to cobble together a joint declaration ahead of a US-sponsored conference later this year aimed at reviving the peace process, which has been dormant for seven years.