RAMALLAH, West Bank - The chief Palestinian peace negotiator raised the stakes Tuesday for a U.S.-sponsored peace conference, saying there will be no talks with Israel unless it agrees to set a deadline for establishing a Palestinian state.
Ahmed Qureia's ultimatum is the latest problem to beset already troubled plans for the conference. Arab nations have been slow to endorse the effort, and Israel is making only general promises instead of specific proposals.
Late Tuesday, Israeli aircraft hit a Hamas-run police station in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing at least four people, Palestinian security and hospital officials said.
The Israeli military confirmed it carried out an airstrike, saying the target was a Hamas position in southern Gaza. It said the attack came after the firing of mortar shells by Hamas at an Israeli village near Gaza.
Islam Shahwan, a Hamas security spokesman, said the target was a location for Hamas riot police. Witnesses said the dead were in uniform.
Earlier, Israeli forces fired a missile that hit a house in northern Gaza, wounding three people. The military said it was aiming at a rocket squad, but the missile misfired and hit the house.
Israel and the Palestinians differ over the issue of a timetable for setting up a Palestinian state, and talks between President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have so farfailed to solve the impasse.
"The Israeli prime minister has stated that he will not accept a timetable, and we say we will not accept negotiations without a timetable," Qureia said at a news conference with the EuropeanUnion's external affairs commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
Qureia indicated the talks with Israel weren't going well.
"We haven't gotten closer yet concerning the issues," he said. "We are talking in general about the issues that should be included in the document. [But] we haven't yet touched the core issues."
What the Palestinians want, he said, is "a clear and specific document, without vagueness, that lays the basic foundation for all final status issues. Without that, the conference will be hindered."
Israeli government spokesman Miri Eisin said negotiations should be conducted in private, not through the media.
"We're not at the ultimatum stage," Eisin said. "They agreed to work to go forward, and we are committed to going forward to a joint statement."
No date has so far been set for the peace conference in Annapolis, Md., because the two sides remain so far apart on the starting point. Israel wants a vague joint statement of objectives, but the Palestinians want a detailed outline that would address core issues.
These include final borders, sovereignty over disputed Jerusalem and a solution for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948.
In Egypt on Tuesday, Abbas lashed out against Israel for cutting fuel supplies to Gaza to pressure militants there to stop their dailyrocket fire into southern Israel.
"We have told the Israelis that they are wrong in adopting these measures, which we fully reject," Abbas said after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. "We do not accept at all this collective punishment."
If the energy cutbacks don't halt rocket attacks, then Israel threatens an invasion.
Information for this article was contributed by Sarah El Deeb of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 10/31/2007