Middle East: A senior member of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's party has threatened Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas with assassination if the group renews suicide bombings in Israel.
Asked about Tzachi Hanegbi's comments, given in a radio interview, an aide to Mr Olmert suggested he had spoken on his own initiative.
"No one speaks in the name of the prime minister," said the aide, who was accompanying Mr Olmert on a visit to Britain.
Mr Haniyeh said Mr Hanegbi's threat was indicative of "a type of political madness from some Israeli leaders".
Hamas carried out almost 60 suicide bombings in Israel after the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000 but halted such attacks in mid-2004 and has largely abided by a ceasefire reached in early 2005.
It declared that truce dead last Friday after seven Palestinians, including three children, were killed on a Gaza beach on a day of Israeli shelling.
Meanwhile, Hamas appeared to be backing away yesterday from a showdown with President Mahmoud Abbas over his planned referendum on a statehood manifesto, saying it would allow more time for talks to resolve the dispute.
The Palestinian parliament convened to consider a motion by Hamas to declare illegal the July 26th referendum over the political document, which implicitly recognises Israel by envisaging a Palestinian state alongside it.
But the Islamic militant group, which formed a government after winning a January election and which advocates Israel's destruction, said it would delay lodging the motion until June 20th.
Opinion polls show strong support for the manifesto, drawn up by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel has rejected it as a non-starter because of its call for a Palestinian state in the entire occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian political tensions again flared into violence yesterday. Hamas gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank rockets at the southern Gaza headquarters of the Preventive Security Service, an agency loyal to Mr Abbas.
One person, a passerby, was killed and four people were wounded in the clash in Rafah, following the killing earlier of a gunman from a Hamas unit. Gunmen set fire to Mr Haniyeh's office in Ramallah, which was unoccupied. Mr Haniyeh does not have access to the office because of Israeli curbs on his travel.