Key elements of the commission's plan include the negotiation of a US-Russia accord for bilateral deep reductions going far beyond expected commitments, the negotiation of a multilateral global zero accord for the phased reduction of all nuclear arsenals, and the establishment of a comprehensive system of safeguards on the use of nuclear energy.

On Sunday, the European Union warned Iran that "harassment or intimidation" of embassy staff would be met with a "strong and collective" response.

In a separate development, Iran's state TV said the recount had started on Monday in the capital Tehran as well as in the provinces. Iran's Guardian Council has offered to recount a random 10% of the votes from the election.

Ayatollah Khatami is not regarded as a high-profile figure, so it was not clear how much weight his words carried.

However, he is a member of the influential Assembly of Experts and his threats seemed likely to further intimidate protesters whose presence on the streets has dwindled in the face of the deployment of security forces in large numbers.

The authorities have repeatedly dismissed the opposition complaints. In remarks quoted on the official IRNA news agency on Friday , Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, a spokesman for the 12-member Guardian Council charged with vetting elections, said the panel had “almost finished reviewing defeated candidates’ election complaints” which the council said earlier numbered in excess of 600.“The reviews showed that the election was the healthiest since the revolution,” Mr. Kadkhodaei said. “There were no major violations in the election.”

on Friday, at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Eight in Trieste, Italy, a joint statement said they “deployed post-electoral violence which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians” and urged Iran to respect human rights, including freedom of expression.” Along with Japan and Russia, the G-8 includes the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain.It called on Iran to “guarantee that the will of the Iranian people is reflected in the electoral process” but it said the door must remain open to dialogue with Tehran in its contentious nuclear program, news reports said.

The joint statement was a compromise between some European countries seeking a hard line, and Russia, whose foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, was quoted as telling a news conference in Trieste that while Moscow wanted to express its “most serious concern” over use of force in Iran, “we will not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs.”

In another indication of the depth of divisions that remain, a senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, called for “national conciliation.” “Definitively, something must be done to ensure that there are no embers burning under the ashes, and that hostilities, antagonism and rivalries are transformed into amity and cooperation among all parties,” he said in comments posted on the state-run Press TV Web site.

Western aid for the reconstruction of Gaza after Israel's devastating offensive at the turn of the year is dependent on the outcome of the talks.

"No leader has the right to compromise on the right of return. We reject the permanent resettlement of Palestinian abroad, for instance in Jordan," he said.

Hamas has "no illusions about the new policy... we want change on the ground that will bring about an end to the occupation," he said.

n recent days Hamas officials have signalled that they may be ready to accept a Palestinian state limited to the territories seized in the 1967 Middle East war despite a commitment in the movement's charter to regaining the whole of historic Palestine.

"We reject the position taken by Netanyahu... on east Jerusalem, settlement activity, the right of return of Palestinian refugees and his vision of a demilitarised Palestinian state deprived of sovereignty over its land, air space and territorial waters," Meshaal said.

"We are opposed to Israel being a Jewish state ... because that would amount to the denial of the rights of the six million Palestinain refugees," Meshaal added, slamming the position of the new Israeli government as "fascist".

He said Hamas, which is mainly supported by Syria and Iran, sees no alternative but to continue armed struggle to liberate Palestinian land after decades of Israel flouting international resolutions to withdraw. "There is no alternative," Meshaal said. "Peaceful resistance works for a civil rights struggle, not in front of an occupation armed to the teeth."

"The minimum we accept is a Palestinian state with (East) Jerusalem as its capital, full sovereignty, removal of settlements and the refugees' right of return," he said.

"The state that Netanyahu talked about, with control on it by land, sea and air, is a freak entity and a big prison, not a country fit for a great people," Meshaal said in a speech in the Syrian capital to supporters of Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in 2006.

"We warn against any Arab leniency on this issue. The calls by the leaders of the enemy for the Jewishness of Israel are racist, not different to Italian Fascism and Hitler's Nazism," said Meshaal, who lives in exile in Syria.

"The enemy's leaders call for a so-called Jewish state is a racist demand that is no different from calls by Italian Fascists and Hitler's Nazism," Mr Meshaal said.

The U.S. government supported all this, but asked Mr. Sharon for two more things. First, that he remove some West Bank settlements; we wanted Israel to show that removing them was not impossible. Second, we wanted him to pull out of Gaza totally -- including every single settlement and the "Philadelphi Strip" separating Gaza from Egypt, even though holding on to this strip would have prevented the smuggling of weapons to Hamas that was feared and has now come to pass. Mr. Sharon agreed on both counts.

On April 14, 2004, Mr. Bush handed Mr. Sharon a letter saying that there would be no "right of return" for Palestinian refugees. Instead, the president said, "a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."

On the major settlement blocs, Mr. Bush said, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Several previous administrations had declared all Israeli settlements beyond the "1967 borders" to be illegal. Here Mr. Bush dropped such language, referring to the 1967 borders -- correctly -- as merely the lines where the fighting stopped in 1949, and saying that in any realistic peace agreement Israel would be able to negotiate keeping those major settlements.

On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth. Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: "Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements."

Ariel Sharon did not invent those four principles. They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003.

They were not secret, either. Four days after the president's letter, Mr. Sharon's Chief of Staff Dov Weissglas wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that "I wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached between us: 1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea & Samaria."

Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed "agreed principles." On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that "the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward."

n recent weeks, American officials have denied that any agreement on settlements existed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on June 17 that "in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility." These statements are incorrect. Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation -- the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step.

It is true that there was no U.S.-Israel "memorandum of understanding," which is presumably what Mrs. Clinton means when she suggests that the "official record of the administration" contains none. But she would do well to consult documents like the Weissglas letter, or the notes of the Aqaba meeting, before suggesting that there was no meeting of the minds.

Israeli military officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity under army rules, said that Palestinian forces would now be able to operate 24 hours a day in the cities of Ramallah, Qalqilya, Bethlehem and Jericho, and would have to coordinate less with Israeli forces in the area, implying that the forces would reduce their own nighttime raids on those cities.

Israeli forces have been carrying out arrest raids almost nightly. On Wednesday night, for example, seven Palestinian suspects were arrested, and on Monday night six were arrested, including three from Qalqilya.

Military officials emphasized that the army would continue to operate in all the West Bank, but one said that the army would now enter the four cities only “in case of an urgent security need, and in accordance with security assessments.”

Two recent deadly shootouts in Qalqilya between Palestinian forces and armed Palestinian militants of the Islamic group Hamas have been mentioned as evidence of a new determination on the part of the Palestinian security apparatus. Four police officers, four militants and a bystander were killed in the clashes that occurred during attempts to arrest the gunmen.

In addition to removing the checkpoints, Israel says it has agreed to issue more V.I.P. cards for Palestinian businessmen, to ease their passage over the crossings into Israel.

But, he added, "I am not saying that now the CIA has done this. There are different groups. It could be the [work of another] intelligence service; it could be the CIA; it could be the terrorists. Anyway, there are people who employ these types of methods."

He also called on Obama to pull out Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton, the US security co-ordinator in the region, who is supervising the training of Palestinian forces in the West Bank.

"The call by the Israeli leader for a Jewish state is nothing but a racist call, no different from Nazis and other calls denounced by the international community."

"Peaceful resistance works for a civil rights struggle, not in front of an occupation armed to the teeth."

"We appreciate Obama's new language towards Hamas. And it is the first step in the right direction towards a dialogue without conditions, and we welcome this," he said.

Israeli and Western sources said the Israel Defense Forces would refrain from entering Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jericho and Qalqilya, except in cases where the army believed Palestinian militants were poised to attack Israelis. The move stops short of a full withdrawal from these towns.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced yesterday that the Israeli authorities had somewhat eased travel restrictions for Palestinians to and from four cities in the West Bank: Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus and Qalqilyah.

However OCHA also said that the Israel Defense Forces claim that there are only 16 manned roadblocks in the West Bank is incorrect. According to OCHA there are 69 manned roadblocks.