US was told of attack plan

The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said yesterday that Israel had told Washington in advance of its plans to attack Yasser Arafat's compound and given assurances that it intended to isolate the Palestinian leader, but not to kill or capture him.
Mr Powell condemned recent Palestinian terrorist attacks "in the strongest possible terms", but did not criticise the Israeli action.

As far as US policy went, he said, "there is nothing we are not considering". This appeared to disguise an internal debate about the direction of the administration's policy.

American officials were yesterday engaged in a desperate attempt to come up with a new Middle East policy, not so much to rescue the peace process - regarded for the moment as beyond redemption - but to salvage their credibility in the region, and to some extent at home.