A Palestinian man riding a motorcycle was shot and killed in the West Bank city of Nablus. Palestinians accuse Israeli soldiers of often deliberately shooting civilians and then claiming they were resistance fighters. The military said the man, Muhammad Hamad, 23, was lightly wounded in the leg. But a reporter with the Associated Press said he saw the man's body in a hospital morgue with two gunshot wounds to the chest. Meanwhile, the Palestinians reacted warily last night after Israelis admitted its harsh security clamp in occupied areas was backfiring and offered talks. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's national security adviser Jibril Rajoub, said no talks had been scheduled. But he added that the Palestinians had no veto on any meeting as long as they did not meet merely for the sake of holding meetings. "We are looking for serious negotiations without aggression," another Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina said . Israelis earlier said Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz will hold talks with Palestinian leaders next week. It would be first such ministerial meeting between the two sides since Ahmad Qurie was nominated Palestinian prime minister last month and marks a more moderate Israeli stance which has raised a glimmer of hope for the troubled "road map" peace plan. Israeli political sources said the head of the defence ministry's diplomatic and security branch, Amos Gilad, had exploratory talks with Palestinian Authority officials this week to pave the way for a meeting involving Mofaz next week. The move followed comments by Lieutenant-General Moshe Yaalon who told columnists in a briefing that curfews and blockades to prevent martyr attacks only spread hatred for Israel by hurting an entire population. Israel limited access of Muslim worshippers to Haram Al Sharif in Jerusalem for special Friday prayers, setting off an angry scuffle, while the US offered a 5 million US dollars (BD1.89m) reward in the investigation of a deadly bombing of a US convoy. Elsewhere, several thousand Islamic Jihad supporters gathered in Gaza City to mark the anniversary of the death of the group's leader Fathi Shakaki, who was killed by gunmen in Malta in 1995. Israeli soldiers also detonated an explosive device in the house of a suspected armed activist in the West Bank village of Hizma, north of Jerusalem. **PHOTO CAPTION*** The brother of 23-year-old Mohammed Hamad cries over his brother's body at the hospital of the West Bank town of Nablus Saturday Nov. 1, 2003. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)