U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney says he is ready to meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the near future if he implements a U.S.-brokered cease-fire plan to end 18 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence. 

Mr. Cheney spoke at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Tuesday following talks in Jerusalem. 

The vice president says Mr. Arafat needs to show 100 percent effort to get a ceasefire started and start implementing the plan brokered by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet last year. 

Prime Minister Sharon said Israel will allow Mr. Arafat to travel abroad if the Palestinian leader puts the Tenet plan into effect. But Mr. Sharon said Israel's government would have to decide whether to let Mr. Arafat return if there are further terror attacks or if the Palestinian leader makes comments that Israel views as "incitement to violence." 

A senior advisor to Mr. Arafat, Nabil Abu Rudainah, called Mr. Cheney's comments "a step in the right direction" toward putting U.S.-Palestinian relations back on the right track. Palestinian officials were angered by Mr. Cheney's failure to schedule a meeting with Mr. Arafat while he was in the region. Overnight, Israel withdrew its troops from Bethlehem and nearby Beit Jala - the last of the West Bank areas recently occupied by Israeli forces. The pull-out was a Palestinian condition for starting ceasefire talks. Four armed Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed during scattered violence elsewhere. 

Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP.

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