The U.S. ambassador to Israel urged Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Monday to do more to crack down on militants and repeated a U.S. call for Israeli forces to withdraw from reoccupied Palestinian areas. 
Ambassador Dan Kurtzer made clear that Arafat was under U.S. pressure to take tougher action against Palestinian militant groups that Washington has added to a list of "terrorist organizations" subject to tight financial controls. 
Kurtzer made his comments three days after U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield created diplomatic waves with a statement that the Palestinian uprising had turned into a process of "calculated terror." 
"What these various phenomena represent is an effort on our part to be more persuasive with Chairman Arafat, that he needs to make decisions with respect to where he stands on questions related to terrorism," Kurtzer told a Tel Aviv news conference. 
The United States is seeking to calm the conflict to help bolster Arab support for military strikes on Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks on Washington and New York. 
But many Palestinians argue that they cannot be expected to end guerrilla activity while they remain under Israeli military occupation and Jewish settlements are set up on Arab territory in contravention of international law. 
Kurtzer said Israel, where some have felt slighted by U.S. efforts to court Arab and Muslim states, was regarded as a member of the anti-terror alliance though it has sent no troops. 
He suggested, however, that Israel may have a military role to play in the future. "There may be a stage at some other point in the international effort against terrorism where that becomes appropriate, but it isn't at this stage," he said. 
Kurtzer said Washington held to its position that Israel should remove its forces from Palestinian-ruled territory seized last month following the assassination of a Cabinet minister. 
The right-wing minister was killed in retaliation for the killing of a Palestinian guerrilla official. 
"It's been our view that the right of self-defense, which Israel certainly has and no one challenges, should not be exercised with incursions into (Palestinian-ruled areas)," he said, predicting Israeli forces would withdraw in a few days. 
Kurtzer called on Arafat to "act against the (militant) organizations themselves, to shut them down, to arrest those responsible for acts of terror, to prosecute those people." He said efforts must also be made to cut off their funds. 
Arafat has insisted his security forces have been rounding up militants acting against Palestinian national interests. Israeli officials have said he has done virtually nothing to rein in the radicals. 
The State Department last Friday added the militant Palestinian organization Hamas to its list of "terrorist organizations" that should be subjected to tight financial controls. 
Hamas has killed dozens of Israelis in attacks in the past 13 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed. 
Israel has justified its recent incursions in the West Bank as a drive to capture militants it blames for a wave of bombings. 
Palestinians have accused Israel of trying to topple Arafat. But Kurtzer said that was not Israel's position and that the United States would oppose any effort to "delegitimize" Arafat. 
He played down expectations about a new U.S. peace initiative, but said Washington was considering whether to lay out its views publicly on the Middle East situation. 
Kurtzer said he was not aware of any plans for President Bush to hold his first talks with Arafat at the U.N. General Assembly meeting later this month, though he said such a meeting could not be ruled out. 
He said Israel had made clear "its position that it would prefer that a meeting (with Arafat) not take place."