Palestinian and Israeli officials said on Saturday that President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres planned to meet on Sunday in an effort to turn a fragile ceasefire into a lasting truce. 
In a tentative sign the truce may be taking root, members of the militant Hamas group and other Palestinian officials said that Hamas was willing to suspend suicide attacks inside Israel "in the coming period" unless it was provoked by the Jewish state. 
The international community has been pressuring Arafat and Peres to hold the long-overdue meeting as soon as possible in order to strengthen the five-day-old ceasefire. 
A senior Israeli political source said a "very successful" preparatory meeting between Peres, a small Israeli delegation and senior Palestinian negotiators took place on Saturday. 
"If there are no exceptional security incidents, the meeting will take place," the source said. 
It was unclear where Sunday's meeting would be held. 
Arafat visited Saudi Arabia on Saturday to brief Saudi leaders on the latest developments in the Middle East crisis. He was due to travel to Syria on Tuesday for an official visit that had been postponed after the attacks on New York and Washington. 
Peres and Arafat, both Nobel Prize winners, have met several times during the Palestinian revolt. 
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo listed key issues for the success of the meeting: a timetable for the implementation of a pair of U.S.-led truce-to-talks plans under international supervision, the lifting of the Israeli blockade on Palestinian areas, a freeze of the establishment of a buffer zone on a section of the border between the West Bank and Israel proper, and an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem. 
Sunday's talks received a boost after a senior Hamas official indicated the group may cease suicide attacks. 
"The Hamas movement and its military wing don't live in a vacuum; they take decisions based on the interests of the Palestinian people," said the official. 
"Is it in the interest of the people to carry out martyrdom attacks now? Maybe not," he told Reuters. 
Hamas opposes peace talks with Israel and has carried out a wave of suicide attacks inside the Jewish state, killing scores of Israelis. 
Though Arafat has asked for a total cessation of hostilities, Hamas and Palestine Liberation Organisation factions have decided to acquiesce everywhere except in Israeli-controlled areas in the occupied West Bank. 
Meanwhile, the death toll in the year-long Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation continued to rise. 
Palestinian policemen Imad Awad, from Gaza, died on Saturday from wounds sustained nine days ago during an Israeli incursion into Ramallah, hospital sources said. 
Another man, 60-year-old Abdel-Latif Radwan, suffered a heart attack after inhaling teargas which was fired at a group of Palestinians trying to bypass an army checkpoint near the village of Jet east of the West Bank town of Qalqilya, Palestinian hospital sources said. 
The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the report. 
The deaths brought the toll to at least 586 Palestinians and 168 Israelis since the Palestinians began their uprising against Israeli occupation nearly a year ago after peace talks stalled. 
There were several other clashes in the West Bank and Gaza during the day. Israeli troops shot and wounded a 33-year-old Palestinian man near the West Bank city of Nablus, hospital sources said. 

