Abbas calls off meet with Sharon

The cancellation of Wednesday's talks came after Abbas's approach to the ongoing peace process was criticised at a gathering of senior Palestinian officials held here late Monday, chaired by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

It would have been the second meeting of the two prime ministers in eight days, which have seen hopes rise of progress for the US-backed "roadmap" for peace which aims to bring an end to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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A statement obtained here Tuesday said that the meeting on Monday had agreed that all Palestinian prisoners must be released unconditionally.

"The leadership rejects Israel's approach to the prisoners issue and all attempts to categorise them according to political affiliation or to control the destiny of each one of them according to the law of occupation and aggression against our people," it said.

Meanwhile, Israeli police said Tuesday that an explosion at a house near Tel Aviv which left two people dead was most likely to have been the work of a Palestinian suicide bomber.

"There is a very, very strong chance that it was the result of an attack by a Palestinian suicide bomber," Tel Aviv's police commissioner Yehuda Bahar told military radio.

Officers had recovered a detonator amid the rubble left by the blast at a house in the village of Kfar Yabetz, near the West Bank, on Monday night, police sources added.

"Apparently it was not caused by a gas explosion, the damage is too extensive and one of the bodies has been totally blown to pieces", in a further indication that it was a suicide attack, another senior police official, Amichai Shai, told the radio.