Palestinian leadership distances itself from bin Laden

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- The Palestinian leadership rushed to distance itself Monday from Osama bin Laden while its police forces opened fire on university students protesting the U.S.-led military strikes on Afghanistan.

Two Palestinians, ages 13 and 21, were killed in a gun battle between police and students in Gaza, police said. The worst internal fighting in several years also left 45 people wounded, Palestinian police commander Ghazi Jabali said.

The Palestinian Authority has tried to quell expressions of support for the Saudi exile accused of leading the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

In Gaza City, more than 1,000 students from the Islamic University staged a march Monday, carrying bin Laden pictures and waving flags of the Islamic militant group Hamas.

The marchers shouted bin Laden's name and chanted: "Long live Palestine, long live Afghanistan, long live Islam."

Police restricted coverage of the march, ordering journalist at one point to leave the area.

After the march, dozens of students, some of them armed, waged a running battle with police who fired guns and tear gas in an attempt to break up the crowd.

A 13-year-old boy and a 21-year-old university student were killed in the fighting, police said. Forty-five people were hurt by tear gas, stones and bullets, doctors said. Among those were 10 policemen, including one who was shot, said the police chief, Ghazi Jabali.

In videotaped remarks aired across the Arab world Monday, Bin Laden sought to draw a parallel between his confrontation with America and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"In these days, Israeli tanks infest Palestine -- in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jalla, and other places in the land of Islam, and we don't hear anyone raising his voice or moving a limb," bin Laden said in apparent criticism of the Arab world.

Bin Laden said that "neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine."

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the Palestinian issue should not be used as an excuse for extremist political or religious positions.

"We don't want crimes committed in the name of Palestine," he said.

Bin Laden has called for driving Israel out of the Middle East before. However, his main emphasis has been on forcing U.S. troops out of his native Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest shrines.

Rabbo said the Palestinian leadership had not decided whether it supports the U.S.-led attacks against Afghanistan. He said he expected the topic to be discussed during a meeting of Arab foreign ministers. No date had been set.

"It's true that there is an unfair situation and continuous crimes and killings exerted against the Palestinians," he said. "This does not justify or give cover for anyone to kill or terrorize innocent civilians."

The official Palestinian response stood in marked contrast to the position adopted in 1990 when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein said he was waging war with the United States on behalf of the Palestinians.

At the time, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sided with Saddam against the United States, a decision Palestinian officials have privately acknowledged was a mistake.

Arafat and several of his ministers were scheduled to travel to Cairo on Monday for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on events in Afghanistan.

The radical Islamic movement Hamas, which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel and has condemned U.S. support for the Israelis, was relatively restrained in its response to the campaign against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, which has been protecting bin Laden.

"We should boycott all American products and raise our voices against this new aggression against Islam," said Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader in Gaza.

Israelis, meanwhile, were told by their leaders they would probably not become a target of retaliatory strikes.

"There's no need to worry. We're not in this war," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said.