WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (AFP) - The United States on Friday accused the Palestinian Authority of doing little or nothing to find those responsible for last year's deadly bombing of a US diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip.
On the one-year anniversary of the attack, which killed three American contractors working as security guards for the US embassy in Tel Aviv, the State Department harshly criticized the Palestinians for "not acting" to bring the bombers to justice.
"We have consistently demanded that the Palestinian Authority take action to locate, apprehend and bring to justice the killers of our three colleagues there," spokesman Richard Boucher said. "The Palestinian Authority's performance on this issue has been unacceptable to us.
"We haven't seen them demonstrate either the will, much less the capacity, to investigate the case seriously," he told reporters. "We have seen statements from time to time by Palestinian officials that they know who did it.
"If that's true, then they should take immediate action to arrest and prosecute whoever did it," Boucher said.
In the weeks after the October 15, 2003 attack, the Palestinians did take some suspects into custody but at the time Washington was skeptical of their possible roles and the detainees were later released.
"We expressed certain skepticism that they had arrested the people who were really responsible for these crimes, and felt that there was further serious investigation and action that needed to be taken," Boucher said. "That remains the case today."
The three men killed in the bombing were private contractors working for the US-based security firm DynCorp. A fourth man was seriously injured in the explosion, which hit the second of three armored Chevrolet Suburbans light trucks traveling to Gaza.
The convoy had been carrying diplomats from the embassy to Gaza to interview Palestinian students applying for Fulbright scholarships to study in the United States.
State Department officials said the bomb had been planted before the convoy passed through the Erez Crossing into Gaza from Israel. Witnesses said Palestinian police had discovered a cable in an abandoned house that led them to believe the device may have been remote controlled.
The blast was the first attack of its kind in the Palestinian territories against a US target and Palestinian officials, including Yasser Arafat and prime minister Ahmed Qorei, condemned it.