JERUSALEM — Israel's defense minister advised the incoming Palestinian prime minister today to fear for his life if Hamas militants start attacking Israel again.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz's warning to Hamas, recently elected to rule the Palestinian Authority, was the first to identify Hamas' prime minister-designate, Ismail Haniyeh, as a potential target for an Israeli pinpoint attack.

"No one is immune," Mofaz told Army Radio, a day after an Israeli airstrike on an ice cream truck killed two Islamic Jihad militants and three bystanders in Gaza City. Two of those killed were aged 8 and 14.

Hamas, which is in the process of forming a Cabinet, has rejected international calls to renounce its violent, anti-Israel ideology, but has maintained a year-old moratorium on suicide bombings.

On Tuesday, Mofaz warned that Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, could be targets of pinpointed Israeli killings if the bombings resume.

VIENNA, Austria — Strong U.S. opposition appeared close to torpedoing a Russian initiative that would leave Iran with a small-scale uranium enrichment program, diplomats said today as Moscow and Washington struggled to find common ground on what to do about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.One of the diplomats said Germany also remained open to the proposal, which would allow the Iranians to run 20 uranium-enriching centrifuges domestically while ceding control of large-scale enrichment to Moscow, on Russian soil.A European official said that ultimately the plan would fail if the Americans opposed it.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's president postponed a decision today on when to call the new parliament into session after the dominant Shiite alliance requested a delay to resolve a deadlock over the composition of the government.A surge of sectarian violence has complicated the already snarled negotiations to form a government reflecting Iraq's main ethnic and religious communities, which the United States and its allies hope will stabilize the country so they can start pulling out troops. Scattered bombings, mortar blasts and gunfire killed another 11 people.President Jalal Talabani's failed bid to order parliament into session on March 12 — the deadline set by the constitution — raised questions about whether the political process can withstand the unrelenting violence or if Iraq will disintegrate into civil war.A political committee representing the seven Shiite parties that make up the United Iraqi Alliance sent Talabani a letter today asking him to delay the first session until there is agreement on who should occupy top government positions.The talks have deadlocked over the second-term candidacy of Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whose most powerful supporter is the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Arab television on Monday broadcast a new videotape showing three Christian peace activists taken hostage in Iraq last year, but a fourth — the only American abducted — was missing from the footage.The four had not been heard from since a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera television on Jan. 28, dated from a week before. A statement purportedly accompanying that tape said they would be killed unless all Iraqi prisoners were released from Iraqi and U.S. prisons. No deadline was set.The hostages seen in the new Al-Jazeera video dated Feb. 28 were Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32; and Briton Norman Kember, 74.Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va., was not in the 25-second tape, said Maxine Nash, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Baghdad.The four workers disappeared Nov. 26. The previously unknown Swords of Righteous Bridges claimed responsibility for kidnapping them.The activists had been warned repeatedly by Iraqi and Western security officials before being abducted that they were taking a grave risk by moving around Baghdad without bodyguards.